As an ageing population increases, the demographics of the web will shift with it.
IT IS perhaps easy to forget that not everyone is connected to the internet. But one in five Britons do not use the web. Fully 16% of British adults have no internet access in their homes. A study from Ipsos-MORI attributes this phenomenon to two interlinking factors: ability and security. Of those who are not regularly plugged in, a large proportion would like to be better at navigating it. They can only perform basic activities, such as searching the web or sending an email.
In certain respects this is not surprising. Forever in flux, the cyber-world is a disconcerting place for the uninitiated. Fraud is a worry, even if fears might be overblown: while 64% of people are concerned about being hacked, only 6% actually have been.
Being offline may have a certain appeal for some, but it puts young jobseekers at a disadvantage. An estimated 7% of people aged 18-24 are offline (according to the Oxford Internet Survey). This is insignificant as a proportion of the total population. But in absolute terms that equates to hundreds of thousands of youngsters. Even if they find a job, they might not be able to perform well at it without the internet skills required in the working world.
Bianca Reisdorf, who has studied internet use in Britain and Sweden at the University of Oxford, remarks that it is a common misconception that the number of “offliners” is in decline. It is unlikely that non-users of the internet will “die out”, she says, because a considerable portion of them are young. The poor, badly-educated and the unemployed are the most likely to be off the hook.
Instead one group is bucking the trend. The elderly are increasingly surfing the web. They have seen the most rapid growth in take-up rates in Britain. Fully 37% of over-65 year-olds now use the internet daily. As an ageing population increases, the demographics of the web will shift with it.