12.29.05
Men want facts, women seek relations on Web - Yahoo! News
A new internet usage poll from pew is due out today, many of the internet browsing habits that we have been assuming are apparently backed up by those surveyed in the poll.
In an article via yahoo / reuters by Eric Auchard, we can establish that men are more likely to buy online, download files, surf for porn and engage in action activities online. Women tend to enagage in more communication that establishes community and relationships, and men are usually right to the point, especially in emails.
One of the suprising results was that women under 29 are just about as apt at internet verbage and usage, and the next generation of adults may see women blogging and otherwise using the web community more than men.
Some of the findings from the interview with Deborah Fallows are quoted here:
Internet users share many common interests, but men are heavier consumers of news, stocks, sports and pornography while more women look for health and religious guidance, a broad survey of U.S. Web usage has found.
-snip-
“Once you get past the commonalities, men tend to be attracted to online activities that are far more action-oriented, while women tend to value things involving relationships or human connections,” said Deborah Fallows, a research fellow at Pew and author of the report.A larger number of men surf the Internet for pleasure, with 70 percent acknowledging they go online to pass time, compared with 63 percent of women. Men are more likely than women to listen to music, view Webcams and pay for digital content.
-snip-
Men want facts, women seek relations on Web - Yahoo! News
WEB RISKS, JARGON PUT WOMEN OFFOver the past decade, men have proved more willing to engage in riskier encounters or transactions, such as joining chat rooms, bidding in online auctions or trading stocks. Auctions attract 30 percent of men versus 18 percent of women.
In addition, 21 percent of males confess to looking at porn online compared with just 5 percent of females, the Pew survey has found. This area is notoriously difficult to measure and may be underreported by survey respondents, Fallows said.
Meanwhile, 74 percent of women seek health or medical information online, far more than the 58 percent of men who do so. Thirty-four percent of women seek religious information from the Web versus 25 percent of men. Such differences mirror gender differences in the offline world, Fallows noted.
-snip-
In addition, the survey found men feel more in control of their computers. Far more men fix their own computers, for instance. Men also are more likely to be aware of the latest technology jargon — terms like spam, firewall, spyware, adware, phishing and RSS.
-snip-
Eighty-six percent of women ages 18-29 are Web users, compared with 80 percent of men. But 34 percent of men 65 and older use the Internet, compared with 21 percent of elderly women.
-snip-
“Teenage girls may do more or less than boys of certain activities, like downloading, but the important message is that the technology is not standing in their way,” the report states. As younger women grow up, women are likely to overtake men in terms of the overall audience, Fallows predicts.
The report cites data from surveys performed by Pew from 2000 through 2005. Some 6,403 respondents took part in 2005.
