Some of the first users online were the elderly: tracing family roots, trading knitting, quilting, etc patterns. Mostly the 'net offers more to the younger user, and so they tend to use it more.

Posted by: on July 15, 2003 06:41 PM

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I was not aware that the some of the first people 'online' were older people, however I certainly understand your general point i.e. that the Internet offers more to younger users.

I think that this highlights a crucial point which emerged from the research, that people surf for their own interests and this partially emerged with the 'holiday' site issue.

However, sadly due to the overwhelming opinion from the survey respondents, which showed that the Web was perceived to be for the young, as well as not consuming the websites, older people were also not generally producing them. Without wanting to paint a picture of the over fifty-fives as a homogeneous group (which they certainly aren't!)there are patterns which suggest that there are common interests and needs to many members of any age group. Websites serving these interests are usually made by people with an active enthusiam for the topic. This means that websites for older people are not being produced, possibly because the potential site creators (i.e. older people) do not have the web skills to do so. Thus I think the 'second level' digital divide is again, the crucial issue.

Thanks for your comment though.

Peter Millward

Posted by: Peter Millward on July 20, 2003 11:53 AM

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