Internet is part of everyday life for young people

Apparently, 75% of people from the 16-24 age group couldn’t live without access to the Internet. This statistic comes from the report published recently by online charity YouthNet, which runs websites offering advice, information and volunteering opportunities to young people. The surveyed young adults even admitted that they prefer to use online resources in order to seek for advice rather than speak about their problems with a professional. This survey also reveals that despite different dangers of the Internet such as phishing email scams, young people generally perceive Internet as safe as long as one knows what they are doing. However, the YouthNet charity believes that older adults need to become more Internet-savvy in order to be more aware about what younger people are doing online.

So, it comes as no surprise that younger adults worship the Internet and cannot live without it as they have grown up with computer and mobile technology and generally understand it better than older generations. But what is the Internet adoption rate among older adults? Well, the BBC reports that in 2006 the UK government has signed up to an EU agreement to halve the gap in internet use for older adults, by 2010. There is still one more year left before we see the official results of this endeavour, but the future seems promising as, according to the Office for National Statistics, since 2006 4 million new households in the UK started using the Internet contributing to a total of 18.3 million households with Internet access in 2009. Also, the findings of a web watch conducted in 2003 by silicon.com show that the number of older adults using the Internet is steadily growing with the UK having the second highest proportion in Europe. Research by Nielsen shows that older people are one of the fastest growing demographics on the Web as 11.5 million people aged 55 and over use the internet in Europe.

Older generations are typically much slower at using new technology and some of the reasons for slower Internet adoption rates among older adults include unfamiliarity, fear, lack of skills, missing background knowledge, lack of perceived benefit from the net and unusable devices (Melenhorst, Rogers and Caylor, 2001).