Old People and the Internet

In class we have been talking about different age groups and their usage of the internet. One specific group we looked at were older people, getting up to ones in their senior years. This group is significant because they grew up and developed without the technology we have today, specifically the internet. It was mentioned how older people are slowly starting to adapt to the internet here in the states. I was curious how they were doing with it in other countries though. An article by Tech Adviser examines how elder people use the internet in the United Kingdom. The article starts out by mentioning how about 14% of the country's adult population, or 7.1 million people, have never used the internet. It then states how two thirds of all people over seventy-five, or 3.4 million people, are ignorant of all things internet. This one third that has used the internet is significantly lower than that of all adults, which is 86%. The younger groups are almost at 100% on the internet, being at 99% for the 16 to 24 population.

Compared to the United States these statistics appear significantly lower. Although a slightly younger age group, 82% of people over sixty-five in the U.S. use the internet, with 71% daily. Even though the age group is younger, a 50% increase over usage compared with the U.K. age group examined shows a little bit of a difference in the usage from country to country. It implies that the U.S.'s elder population uses the internet at much higher rates. This is interesting seeing how both countries are wealthy nations with easy access to internet. One would think there would not be such a big difference seeing these similarities. This shows how the internet is possibly more prominent in U.S. citizen's lives maybe. None the less it is an interesting comparison. Apparently elder people are more with the younger generation new tech in the U.S. compared with their British brethren. Another difference in the countries is the growth of internet use. For the older group of Americans, the amount of internet users rose by 53% from last year. In the same time span, the U.K. group actually went down a little by 0.3%. All of these statistics indicate the different impacts the internet has on different cultures.