Women Now Outnumber Men Online

miller60 writes "There are now more American women than men using the Internet, according to a new study from the Pew Center on the Internet and American Life on gender and use of the Net. While a slightly larger percentage of men than women are online (68 percent vs 66 percent), the larger population of American women tips the balance. Other findings: younger women and black women outpace their male peers by larger margins than the wider population."

Comments

They surveyed ~0.0023% of the population!

[Paska]

"Pew Internet Project surveys between January and June in 2005 show that 67 percent of the adult American population goes online".

No it doesn't, what it shows is that 67% of the 6,403 people surveyed go online - not the whole population (280,000,000+) of America.

This is almost as flawed as running a survey on Slashdot and concluding that 91% of the American population have never had a girlfriend.

Quote from the Methodology section of the PDF:
"The total number of respondents included in the 2002 findings was 14,416 and for 2005 was 6,403."

Re:They surveyed ~0.0023% of the population!

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus, what a silly comment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_survey
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_(statistics)

Re:They surveyed ~0.0023% of the population!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ofcourse, it was an online survey.

Re:They surveyed ~0.0023% of the population!

[acceber]

It would also be worth considering how honest people were in participating in this survey.

For instance, it says that 21% of males visited adult websites compared with only 5% of women. In real life, both figures are probably a fair bit higher.

The survey also concluded that 10% of women seeked info on how to quit smoking, compared with only 5% of men who have a higher smoking prevalence rate than their female counterparts in the US. One would think that these days, the incentive to quit smoking is just about equal for both sexes.

Re:They surveyed ~0.0023% of the population!

[Guus.der.Kinderen]

Even 0.0023% of the population can give a surveyor an accurate result. It all depends on the way the population was sampled. Sampling can be a science in itself though. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_(statistics)

Re:They surveyed ~0.0023% of the population!

[will_die]

Please read a little about statistical analysis.
Using your population number 280000000 and 6,403 people survayed that gives a 95% confidence (which is about the norm for this type of study) that the survey answers are correct and apply to people who were not surveyed. This is with an margin of error of 1.22% which means that survey results may vary by 1.22% in either direction. This is all provided that the people surveyed where a random sample of the US population.

Re:They surveyed ~0.0023% of the population!

[Oldsmobile]

But you run into trouble when you are sampling a small part of the population, even if you have a fair sampling, say the 6000 mentioned. If half of those go online, then you only have a sampling of 3000, of those, half are women, down to 1500. And if you are working out what women online prefer, your sample is becoming woefully inaccurate, as there is no way to have an accurate representation of all demographics.

Besides, 97% of all statistics are simply made up.

Re:They surveyed ~0.0023% of the population!

[killkillkill]

This is almost as flawed as running a survey on Slashdot and concluding that 91% of the American population have never had a girlfriend.

Are you suggesting that 9% of the slashdotters that would participate in such a poll are lying?

Re:They surveyed ~0.0023% of the population!

[Jugalator]

This is with an margin of error of 1.22% which means that survey results may vary by 1.22% in either direction.

... which might just be enough to reverse the article title and much of what's being said in the summary. So in this case, it could still mean quite a bit.

Re:They surveyed ~0.0023% of the population!

[khallow]

1500 is still a good size for a sample *if* it is unbiased. For an unbiased sample, the error scales as the square root of the sample, so a quarter the sample size only doubles the error of the sample.

On the other hand, biasing can screw up your poll even with far larger sample sizes. For example, it makes little sense to measure the internet usage of the richest million people in the US and use that to extrapolate to the poorest million.

Re:They surveyed ~0.0023% of the population!

[scottennis]

What percentage of the population refuses to take polls?

Re:They surveyed ~0.0023% of the population!

[ozmanjusri]

You can easily analyse statistics for significance with chi square or any other tabular analysis. Significance is not always obvious.

Re:They surveyed ~0.0023% of the population!

[Gonzodoggy]

Sounds just like AOL in the old days... 75% of the women were really men.

Re:They surveyed ~0.0023% of the population!

[Anonymous Coward]

survey results may vary by 1.22% in either direction

The word is "may." It is possible. It is highly unlikely, however -- one chance in twenty, if the parent's analysis is correct. The odds are nineteen out of twenty that the results do not vary that much. Does any of you bother to know what he's talking about before posting a comment? Oh, wait, this is Slashdot. Some options: 1) Learn something about statistics other than stupid, misapplied cliches. 2) Propose an alternative to sampling. 3) Point out factual examples of how this report's sampling is wrong. Writing they might not have sampled properly or that the respondents might have answered wrongly is obvious and is a pointless waste of electrons and time.

Re:They surveyed ~0.0023% of the population!

[Bob Uhl]

Why? It's masculine to smoke, but not very feminine; thus it's more acceptable for a man to smoke, and less likely that he'll want to quit, whereas it's less socially acceptable for a woman to smoke and more likely that she'll want to quit.

Or it may be that guys tend to figure they'll tough it out themselves whereas women look for assistance. Or there could be another explanation.

Re:They surveyed ~0.0023% of the population!

[BrenBren]

According to the "Methods" section of the PDF that is referred to in the article (beginning on page 45 of the document):

As a general rule the findings issued by the project are based on the findings of a daily tracking survey on Americans' use of the Internet conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates. Our standard poll is in the field for a month and aims to complete about 2,200 interviews. For results based on the total sample of any given monthly sample of that size, one can say with 95% confidence that the error attributable to sampling and other random effects is plus or minus 2.2 percentage points.
...

The sample for each of our tracking surveys is a random digit sample of telephone numbers selected from telephone exchanges in the continental United States. The random digit aspect of the sample is used to avoid "listing" bias and provides representation of both listed and unlisted numbers (including not-yet-listed numbers). the design of the each [sic] sample achieves this representation by random generation of the last two digits of telephone numbers selected on the basis of their area code, telephone exchange, and bank number.
...
...At least ten atetmpts are made to complete an interview at sampled households. the calls are staggered over times of day and days of the week to maximize the chances of making contact with a potential respondent. ... In each contacted household, interviewers ask to speak with the youngest male currently at home. If no male is available, interviewers ask to speak with the oldest female at home. This systematic respondent selection technique has been shown to produce samples that closely mirror the population in terms of age and sex.

It goes on, but that's the main part I found interesting, with regard to how the survey was done. What worries me is the "youngest male" bit in the last paragraph I quoted. I can think of several housholds (such as mine) where the youngest male is under five years of age, and the parents would most certainly not allow random callers to talk to them.

So what does this tell me? The expectation is that the men are younger than the women that use the Internet. I might be able to find lots of men online, but only if I am willing to rob the cradle. You guys? I hope you like older women.

Re:They surveyed ~0.0023% of the population!

[Skye16]

I do!

Oh wait, fuck! You tricked me!

Re:They surveyed ~0.0023% of the population!

[Old Grey Beard]

95% confidence ... the survey answers are correct and apply to people who were not surveyed ... provided that the people surveyed where a random sample of the US population.

3) Point out factual examples of how this report's sampling is wrong.

From the PDF's "Methodology" section:

The sample for each of our tracking surveys is a random digit sample of telephone numbers selected from telephone exchanges in the continental United States.

Wouldn't a telephone survey tend to rule out a lot of low-income people? And possibly skew the numbers that are broken down by race? (On the assumption that minorities are more likely not to have telephones.) And therefore widen the confidence intervals? There's a section at the end of the PDF about trying to account for "non-participation" but it is based on Census Data for households that have telephones, so I don't think that's an attempt to correct for not having a phone.
And there are many higher-income families (like mine) that use caller ID and never answer the phone if the caller is not identified, or is an 800 number. Not clear if this biases the sample much, but it's possible.

I have another issue with the income breakdown. There should be a distinction drawn between the "chronically" low-income group and the "student" low-income group. I hypothesize that some fraction of low-income respondents are students using mostly school-based Internet access for a few years, while some other fraction of low-income respondents are the working and unemployed poor who have little hope of seeing their incomes jump substantially. These are two wildly different demographics, lumped together by what appears to be inadequate methodology. I'll bet 98% of the "student" group uses the Internet, while under 25% of the rest of the low-income group do not. Isn't this a distinction worth making?

I don't mean to sound ungrateful to Pew for publishing this work as a public service. But either they are allowing some biased sampling or I failed to understand where and how they correct for it.

Re:They surveyed ~0.0023% of the population!

[WhiplashII]

To be more precise, the required sample size is determined by the standard deviation of the paramter in the population. For example, measuring the average height of people in Japan requires a much smaller sample than measuring the average height of people in the US (to the same certainty), because Japan has a more homogenous population. For something like this, an unbiased sample of a few tens will probably give +-5% - thousands would give +-1%. The real problems are bias (which a larger sample size will not help with), and misreporting what was measured.

For example, in this case, the number of males frequenting adult web sites is not what they found. They found the number of males that will admit in a survey that they frequent adult web sites - you cannot assume that the answers are the same without testing (and in this case, testing would be an invasino of privacy at the very least). For the really important surveys, the surveyor actually goes out and verifies a few tens (or hundreds) of responses by hand - and then does the same to the unresponsive population, to try to correct for sampling bias.

Re:They surveyed ~0.0023% of the population!

[raoul666]

No it doesn't, what it shows is that 67% of the 6,403 people surveyed go online - not the whole population (280,000,000+) of America.

No poll I've ever heard of uses the entire population as it's sample size. It's always a small percentage. I'm not a statitician, so I don't know what you need to get a good poll, but if it's a random sample, that could well be enough.

Re:They surveyed ~0.0023% of the population!

[Analogworm]

Word. This is pure bull. Again, some "scientists" who don't understand statistics make broad claims. So sad.

Re:They surveyed ~0.0023% of the population!

[kpainter]

There are three kinds of lies: Lies, damn lies and statistics as Benjamin Disraeli or Mark Twain said depending on to whom you believe the quote should be attributed. You can justify nearly anything to 95% confidence depending on HOW your sample is selected. I think the issue here is that the sample is not at all representative of the population of the US in general.

Re:They surveyed ~0.0023% of the population!

[sheepcentral]

Im sorry but who ever modded the arent post as funny mmust not have read it properly. The post was aimed at correcting an error or misleading information in the slashdot artice. He put one funny bit in it as a side comment not as the focus of his post, his post was more insightful or interesting.

Re:They surveyed ~0.0023% of the population!

[honor, not armor]

This is almost as flawed as running a survey on Slashdot and concluding that 91% of the American population have never had a girlfriend.

Ok, let's take your hypothesis and put it through the scientific method!


... How do we start a poll?

Re:They surveyed ~0.0023% of the population!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok you had your fun, but seriously mate, now you can help clean this coffee off of my monitor.

Re:They surveyed ~0.0023% of the population!

[Boogaroo]

There's also the fact that these "random" phone call surveys often do not include cellphone numbers. They are typically excluded due to the fact it uses the receiver's minutes/money.

This means that you won't sample an estimated six percent of the population at all. "According to our analysis of most recent government data, the demographic information regarding those who have wireless-only service indicates that young, single people living in urban areas are those most likely to have cut the cord."-Insight Research

Doesn't it seem to you that "young, single people living in urban areas" are very likely to be internet users? Six percent missing from the sample could seriously skew the results. Political polls are also skewed due to the younger generation not being surveyed. It'd be interesting to see if they're trying to compensate for that lack of available sample. Even then they could get it wrong.

Re:They surveyed ~0.0023% of the population!

[ToasterofDOOM]

I wish I still had my previous sig right now. Anyways, there are three types of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Yea whatever

[Anonymous Coward]

Men still get more first posts.

Surging

[wombatmobile]

black women have surged online in the last three years

All kinds of women have been "surging" on the internet for a lot more than three years.

Well, certain types of women.

Re:Surging

[rishistar]

And a certain type of surging.

Re:Surging

[Yocto Yotta]

The surge of Bejeweled perhaps?

Re:Surging

[kalyanbk]

More people are finding out about the anonymity the internet is providing and women have an opportunity to thrive in a situation where they can have as many relationships that they would be unable or afraid to have in real life without pressure from society's norms (I am not talking about just women in the US who may already have this freedom but other countries too). You will soon find that what makes a man different from a woman will change soon as both of them get similar exposure, outdoor life and access to information and no/low restriction on their behaviour. Often you may find that in such situations women will behave the same as men if not worse.

Online stores

[Mattygfunk1]

Of course women will gather when a whole new world of "Shopping!!!!" is at their fingertips.

__
Funny adult videos

Re:Online stores

[$RANDOMLUSER]

> Of course women will gather when a whole new world of "Shopping!!!!" is at their fingertips.

And the corollary would be:

Of course men will gather when a whole new world of "Pr0n!!!!" is at their uhhhh.... fingertips.

Re:Online stores

[ettlz]

Of course women will gather when a whole new world of "Shopping!!!!" is at their fingertips.

Yes, and never underestimate the testicular fortitude of a dolls'-house enthusiast granny armed with an Internet connection and an account on eBay. They way they snipe, they should be working for MI6.

Re:Online stores

[AJH16]

And lets not forget AIM. My sister uses her computer almost exclusivly for AIM, checking her friend's blogs and updating her own. As long as we are talking about stats, does anyone know of a good report on who gets infected with viruses the most?

Re:Online stores

[aredubya74]

This immediately requires linkage: The Internet Is For Porn, WoW style.

Re:Online stores

[otomo_1001]

I know this was meant in jest, but I honestly see this as a good thing.

Being able to purchase say... a cd from Germany online and have it delivered within the week is extremely useful. OR to be able to buy items online and have them shipped to your door the day of the release is even more impressive.

Make jokes about women being social creatures that like to buy, but just like the "men" that created the web, we all benefit from each others interests.

Instant SlashDot poll!

[Dystopian Rebel]

"I am a...

o woman
o man
o geek
o Cowboy Neal"

Re:Instant SlashDot poll!

[$rtbl_this]

You forgot:

o All of the above

I mean, have you seen the rack on Cowboy Neal?

Re:Instant SlashDot poll!

[PortWineBoy]

Nope. Just the pics of his server rack.

I have to admit it got me hot and bothered anyway...

Percentage

[HishamMuhammad]

Before somebody says "68+66 does not add up to 100%" I suppose the submitter meant "While the percentage of men who are internet users (68%) is slightly larger than that of women (66%)"...

Re:Percentage

[grunfeld]

Goes to show more women are spending time on the internet, be it as a stay at home mom or from their offices in the ivory towers...... The real question is do people actually pay for survey results like this ...????

Re:Percentage

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the overlap of 34% is accounted for by all the men pretending to be women online.

Re:Percentage

[jeffsbrown]

I think what it says is that 68% of men are online and 66% of women are online, not that 68% of the people online are men and 66% of them are women.

Yeah!

[dalmiroy2k]

With more Women online, my chances of getting laid are now bigger! Nah, who I'm kidding.... :(

Re:Yeah!

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe one of these days the "women" I chat to on IRC will be REAL WOMEN!

Re:Yeah!

[BrynM]

With more Women online, my chances of getting laid are now bigger!

You got it wrong man! We gotta stop this! How long until your next deathmatch is spent camping the catering talking to chix? How long until your HUD has smart looking drapes? I tell you, the internet was made by the military to let us men blow shit up virtually and they can pry my mouse from my cold dead hands when women...

Good point. Ok, we'll let the cute ones use it. And the ones who put out. But that's it! Oh, and Sal's girlfriend too. Sorry Sal.

Re:Yeah!

[Verteiron]

How long until your next deathmatch is spent camping the catering talking to chix? How long until your HUD has smart looking drapes? I tell you, the internet was made by the military to let us men blow shit up virtually

The best Quake2 sniper I ever knew was an old girlfriend of mine. I'll freely admit I wasn't the best Q2 player in the world, but I was far from the worst, too. In a one-on-one game she took me out 93 to 17. I was using every weapon at my disposal. She used nothing but the damn railgun. Eventually she joined some clan or other and competed in tournaments. She was lethal.

Re:Yeah!

[Ekevu]

*raises arms in triumph* Oh Yeah!! It's never been easier to have an IM saying "gets you laid" between asterisks.

Re:Yeah!

[Anonymous Coward]

The best Quake2 sniper I ever knew was an old girlfriend of mine... In a one-on-one game she took me out 93 to 17... She was lethal.

I guess you shouldn't have forgotten her birthday then :)

At last! a chance to get laid!

[Toby The Economist]

How else is it gonna happen? ;-)

and I always thought ...

[asac]

... those women on dating sites were fake. So finally, I get a chance?

Re:and I always thought ...

[smittyoneeach]

Well, if the lady I married is not a woman, then my non-command of detail is worse than I thought. ;)

Re:and I always thought ...

[dptalia]

They're still fake. Women on the internet are faking it as men.

Re:and I always thought ...

[The Snowman]

Women on the internet are faking it as men.

My wife uses the Internet. I guess that means we're homosexuals, right?

Re:and I always thought ...

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

My wife uses the Internet. I guess that means we're homosexuals, right?


[Robin voice]Holy Brokeback Modem Batman[/Robin voice]

Re:and I always thought ...

[swv3752]

I take it you have never questioned why she only wants anal sex with the lights off? :-P

Re:and I always thought ...

[dptalia]

Well, if we're talking "reality" here, then you're pretending to be female and she's pretending to be male.... Between the two of you is an almost normal relationship!

It's true!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just write word 'sex' to google, and you can see by the links women outnumbering men easily.

Bitter Experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh sure, they say they're women.

Re:Bitter Experience

[Anonymous Coward]

"Hi, my name is Galadriel."

Not Quite

[LiquidCoooled]

This is the internet, the place where women are women, and some men are women too.

Re:Not Quite

[doubtless]

and little 15 year old girls are FBI agents.

Re:Not Quite

[cheesee]

guess I better be calling my lawyer then

Re:Not Quite

[Dr. Cody]

...and MEN!

Re:Not Quite

[ceeam]

Little?

Re:Not Quite

[syzler]

The Internet is better than Alaska, where the men are men and the women are too.

Re:Not Quite

[Anonymous Coward]

learned that the hard way

Re:Not Quite

[dangitman]

This is the internet, the place where women are women, and some men are women too.

... and small furry creatures from Alpha Centuari were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.

Woohoo!

[haxor.dk]

Does that mean my chances of coupling with with a female is increased?

Re:Woohoo!

[itsthebin]

an american woman ... don't get too excited too quick

Re:Woohoo!

[Anonymous Coward]

Does that mean my chances of coupling with with a female is increased?

I'm afraid not.

Re:Woohoo!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not if you actually use the word "coupling" when talking to one.

But they use the net differently

[shreevatsa]

What the summary doesn't point out is that women and men seem to view the internet differently.

the research found that men value the net for the freedom it gives them to try new ways of doing things. By contrast women like the opportunities the net gives them to make and maintain human connections.

(Look at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4555370.stm. )

However, I have my own doubts about correct this research is --

The Pew report also found that men are more likely to use the net to get at all kinds of information about sports results, weather, news, job offers and consumer ratings for goods and services. Men were also more likely to use the net for recreation and to listen to music, gather information for hobbies and take part in online fantasy sports leagues.

All that is fine, but any research that doesn't mention porn must be flawed ;)

Re:But they use the net differently

[Anonymous Coward]

That's included in recreation, gathering information, hobbies, news, ratings for services, and online fantasy sports leagues. Porn isn't an aspect of life it can be a lifestyle. If there is anything the internet has done for us, it is that.

Re:But they use the net differently

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone knows it!

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/internet4por n

Re:But they use the net differently

[dheltzel]

All that is fine, but any research that doesn't mention porn must be flawed ;)

Umm, what part of "Men were also more likely to use the net for recreation" didn't you understand?

Re:But they use the net differently

[argStyopa]

All that is fine, but any research that doesn't mention porn must be flawed ;)
Your last comment was meant, I suppose, to be tongue in cheek. I don't think it's wrong, however. Anyone who has 'existed' online since the early days of the WWW *knows* that pr0n has not only been endemic to the 'net experience' but has in fact driven many of its key technologies - audio, then video streaming for example.

I understand that many people are squeamish about the subject, but if we're making a serious survey of net use, you're right - to entirely OMIT pr0n as a subject leaves an, er, gaping hole in the data.

It would be practically like a survey of automobile use without referring to commuting.

Re:But they use the net differently

[vettemph]

>>>Umm, what part of "Men were also more likely to use the net for recreation" didn't you understand?

and "...gather information for hobbies" fwap! fwap! fwap! fwap! fwap!

Re:But they use the net differently

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to have a web-based proxy on one of my websites. It would cache the address you keyed in and then you would view the cache through the page. Someone clever in the porn industry found it, and began hosting a website out of cache files.

My website got over ten million hits that day.

I know these percentages are wrong.

Re:But they use the net differently

[mavenguy]

Much better video to this tune:

The Internet Is For Porn

Re:But they use the net differently

[Chowderbags]

And we wouldn't want a gaping hole in the data! No, we only want the tightest data imaginable. So tight, and young, and... *fwap**fwap**fwap*

Re:But they use the net differently

[Idarubicin]

It would be practically like a survey of automobile use without referring to commuting.

Surely you mean parking....

Re:But they use the net differently

[tgeller]

Oh, but it *does* mention porn! They just edited out a few words. Here's the original:

"...men are more likely to use the net to get all kinds of information about [water] sports results, weather [(such as golden showers)], news [about Layla Lashelle], [blow] job offers..."

Re:But they use the net differently

[JamesTRexx]

At least I can prove that I do, for the most part. :-P

what a stupid poll

[sl8r]

I love these utterly useless, US-centric "internet polls". They make it sound like the net stops at the borders. Ignorant people will be quoting these numbers for years to come, omitting the crucial "american" part.

Re:what a stupid poll

[HermanAB]

Nevermind the net - the whole world stops a short distance beyond the USA borders and if you would try to go beyond, you'll fall off the edge. Here, there be dragons...

Re:what a stupid poll

[BlogPope]

Nevermind the net - the whole world stops a short distance beyond the USA borders and if you would try to go beyond, you'll fall off the edge. Here, there be dragons...

Now now, Canada and Mexico are real, if not quite as large as the "atlases make them out to be

When you fly "internationally", the plane really loops back around and heads to Alaska, which is not really cold but actually a huge series of "studio sets" to fake various locations.

Re:what a stupid poll

[gentlemen_loser]

I don't mean to sound harsh here, but are you overcompensating for something? Myself and most other readers here know and appreciate that the net does not stop at US borders. However, this was a US study by a US company and it clearly states so in the text. It does not try to mask itself as anything more or anything less. A world poll (which you seem to insinuate would be better) would do a diservice to both third world contries as well as countries like, the US, EU, China, etc.

A poll of that magnituge would skew the numbers such that the "global" results would be meaningless. It would start to look like more people in the US are not actually online and that more people in third world countries that REALLY need the help are on line. Think through what you are asking for.

Re:what a stupid poll

[dhakbar]

OMG! Any poll that isn't a worldwide one is "stupid" according to you! We will all make sure to never research our domestic demographics again, because it is so STUPID!

Re:what a stupid poll

[HermanAB]

Well, yeah, every school atlas shows Alaska as a funny shaped island continent next to Hawai, so it must be quite tropical...

Still alot who aren't online

[venicebeach]

These results might have caught my eye more if phrased in the reverse:

About a third of the population does not ever use the internet.

Even in the 18-29 age range its about 1 in 5 who are not online.

Re:Still alot who aren't online

[busmacedon]

They won't be online because they cannot read.

Shameless plagarism courtesy of wikipedia:

"In the United States alone, one in seven persons (i.e., over 40 million people) can barely read a job offer or utility bill..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy

Read this report for more: about 14% of US adults have a below Basic literacy level for prose/documents (can't read a TV program or jury instructions), another fifth have only a "Basic" literacy level for prose/documents (cannot consult documents to find what foods contain certain vitamins.).

A quarter of adults are quantitatively illiterate (have a below basic skill in reading numbers). These people cannot even compare prices of two event tickets.

http://nces.ed.gov/NAAL/

Re:Still alot who aren't online

[johncadengo]

Some people can't afford the internet, regardless of age. This is the United States of America, yes. But even then, not everyone living here is living in prosperity.

It's worse than that

[commodoresloat]

You'd discover that 91% of the American population is dating CowboyNeal.

I already knew that! See...

[Hitto]

There are *billions* of women on the internet.
The catch is, their names all end in .jpg ...

Re:I already knew that! See...

[tuomasr]

The catch is, their names all end in .jpg ...

No way! That's where you're wrong, I've met a lot of nice women on the internet whose name didn't end in .jpg. Let's see, there was Ms. Mpg, Ms. Png, Ms. Avi and so forth.

They must've been poor though, all wanted my credit card number, but of course I feel bad for them since they apparently couldn't even afford clothes...

Re:I already knew that! See...

[Zwets]

Hey, I come from a proud line of .JPGs you insensitive clod! I resent your insinuations regarding the virtues of the women in my family!

Our family name dates all the way back to 17th century Dutch merchants. Originally we were called "Punt-Jan-Pieters' Grootvaeder" ("Dot-Jan-Pieters' Grandfather", in a mysterious reversal of the normal practice of naming people "so-and-so's son or daughter")). It later got shortened to .JPG by a lazy government administrator.

Sincerely,

Hendrik Olivier Thomas .JPG

Re:I already knew that! See...

[grimJester]

My girlfriends' name ends in .jpg, you insensitive clod!
In Korea, only old people's names end in .jpg
In Soviet Russia women watch YOU!

...

..What was that last again?

Re:I already knew that! See...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, they mostly seem to lack pockets for carrying their stuff around and resort to more impractical means to store their girlie things. Unfortionally it seems hard to carry it around, as they keep on pushing it back in and eventually moan in frustration and give up trying while laying back exhausted. :(

Re:I already knew that! See...

[JamesTRexx]

*lol* Your nickname suits you just right.

It's called sampling

[wmajik]

Ok, I'm not one to defend surveys much if at all given that many of them are biased and not done correctly, but the reasoning you mentioned is simply flawed. Surveys are not meant to be done on the entire population, because polling 280 million Americans would be an impossible and unfeasible task.

Surveys take a sample of the population to be polled and use that as a representative measure of the rest of the population. The sample size then is given a confidence interval of +/- percentage points (usually 5%) that indicate the accuracy of the poll, within a reasonable standard deviation. In English, this means that polls aren't 100% accurate, but a properly done survey should be accurate within 5% of the acutal figure the majority of the time.

Selecting a random sample from the population is often the hardest part of any survey, but can be done correctly. To flat out say that using samples means that the data is irrelevant is completely inaccurate.

/rant

Re:It's called sampling

[Alien Being]

"because polling 280 million Americans would be an impossible and unfeasible task"

Nah, we do it every 4 years... oh wait.

Re:It's called sampling

[Anonymous Coward]

No you don't. Because half of those 280 million will be ineligable to vote being that they're too young.

Re:It's called sampling

[FlameboyC11]

Naw, we do it every 10. Oh wait, I'm not lying.

Re:It's called sampling

[pilkul]

polling 280 million Americans would be an impossible and unfeasible task.

Right, and why would we need to? We can just ask the Supreme Court!

Re:It's called sampling

[apflwr]

Selecting a random sample from the population is often the hardest part of any survey, but can be done correctly. To flat out say that using samples means that the data is irrelevant is completely inaccurate.

Which is why you should not put any faith in polls and surveys. They assume that a small number of people are the perfect representations of their demographics, and a few people who go "against the grain" for one reason or another (not all of us are living stereotypes) can tip the scales heavily. Seven of the ten elderly Hispanic women polled happen to use e-mail, suddenly it's a "surprising trend." That means their personal circumstances- family, jobs, whatever- led them to own computers, not that 70% of elderly Hispanic women across the country are online.

Hell, surveys are based on people who don't mind answering a few (sometimes very personal) questions when cold-called at home during dinner (or accosted by a guy with a clipboard at the mall, or whatever.) Personally I don't know a single person who would bother, even my grandmother would hang up the phone. How does that factor in to the polling process? I mean, those who would opt-in to be hassled are certainly of a different mentality than those who wouldn't, is there really an accurate formula to account for the latter since the survey purports to represent them too?

Re:It's called sampling

[ClamIAm]

because polling 280 million Americans would be an impossible and unfeasible task.

Huh, and all these years I thought that the census was pretty accurate. I didn't know it was a fraud.

*Buzz* News Just In...

[Gr1mm-R34p3r]

According to CNN this wonderfully unbiased article's research was scientifically conducted in an IRC sex chat channel over a period of six months only on Friday nights.

but what are they doing?

[javiercr]

Yes so what, the article does not say what they are doing, are women just chatting on MSN Messenger or are they creating new Googles? big difference, I hope they are creating new Googles, but most likely the number of women doing that is still small. It is not such an advance for female-kind to do email and chatting online!

Re:but what are they doing?

[BokLM]

I guess they are probably browsing slashdot, kerneltrap, lkml, freshmeat, security focus, etc ...
What ? There's something else on the internet ?

Re:but what are they doing?

[AtomicBomb]

they creating new Googles? big difference, I hope they are creating new Googles, but most likely the number of women doing that is still small. It is not such an advance for female-kind to do email and chatting online!

Who cares? Internet is just a media. Think about it as a telephone. People enjoy using it to chat with friend will continue to do so when using Internet. Many talk on the phone exclusively on business matter on the other hand. Some design to hack around (remember what's the origin of 2600?) the telephone network. We can find an analogue between the former phone commnunity to the Internet one (IM addicts/.com startup/hackers). Nothing wrong/ primitive/ need to be fixed in terms of user activity profile. It is just a reflection of the society.

Re:but what are they doing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Before the Internet became a huge public media, the matra was (not unlike OpenSource) "if you like it, give back to it by making something yourself". This was the spirit that drove its success before commercialism entered into the picture, and still drives it today. It's a medium, but it's raw, it's direct. Real people add what they care about to it and everyone benefits.

The original post has a point. It's certainly true that a lot of the work in building content has been by computer hobbiests and professionals, and that they were mostly male. If women are on the Internet as much as men; are they now contributing as much as men have; or are women enjoying more of a one-way Internet? If so, this is a big difference.

always with the average, feh

[Quadraginta]

Polls comparing the average behaviour of men and women are boring and useless. Frankly, who gives a damn what the differences between the average man and average woman is? Someone who is average, I guess...

What a pity someone doesn't look at the differences in the distribution of how men and women use the net. Here's my guess: the distibution of men who use the net is probably much wider than the distribution of women, that is, there are probably more male the female total power net geeks, and also more men than women who never use the net at all.

Re:always with the average, feh

[TapeCutter]

Insightfull, wtf, as the other poster suggests, go and look at the study it contains the distributions you are guessing about. Also I'm not sure why you are interested if you don't "give a damm".

"Polls comparing the average behaviour of men and women are boring and useless. Frankly, who gives a damn what the differences between the average man and average woman is?"

No, Viva-la-differance!

(apologies to any one who can spell in either french or english)

women

[D4ve G]

Women creating new googles? What does that mean?

Re:women

[Anonymous Coward]

meaning creating IT-based and web-based businesses or more generally seeing net as tech resource instead of a social gathering.

Re:women

[Anonymous Coward]

More specifically, it means women creating new beer googles, which will help everyone get laid.

Woo!

[Anonymous Coward]

In your face!

In related news...

[Anonymous Coward]

First woman sighted on slashdot.

Re:In related news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh I guess that's me, but wait a sec, i've been visiting this site for quite some time, i guess my ip still doesn't show my gender yet. *sigh*

Re:In related news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Brief psycho-analys shows you're an outcast and not really desired by popular alpha males but in need for male attention and affection (and hopefully lots more things)...

So.. Your place or mine? Or can I download you?

Even Bitter Experience

[Anonymous Coward]

There are more Women online now because they decided to all buy a Webcam and become mangina until they can catch their boyfriend/husband meeting manginas. What really got them suspicious is when men started to go to their PC during the night pretending to go coding, and the "flap flap" sounds that ensued.

American women?

[CrimsonScythe]

"...the larger population of American women tips the balance."

But does this mean that there are more of them numerically, or that they're so large that they just tip the balance easier? This was rather ambiguous, and I refuse to read TFA to find the answer.

Using the Internet Differently

[StonePiano]

Check this BBC article.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4555370.stm
Apparently men and women use the Internet for different priorities.

Could this suggest that there is actually a difference in the genders?
The mystery thickens...

Re:Using the Internet Differently

[marcovje]

Or simply that a higher percentage of women have office-jobs ?

Re:Using the Internet Differently

[marcovje]

Correction to self, Women are roughly as likely to access internet from home or the internet.

The assumption of the report seems to be more that the general statement isn't as general in the article, and only goes for certain categories, like health and religion, none of which surprise me much, (see e.g. contents and subjects of women's magazines)

Re:Using the Internet Differently

[JPriest]

From that link:
"Men tend to be first to try out new net technologies and 68% of the men questioned are the administrator of a household's computer compared to 45% of women.

The Pew report also found that men are more likely to use the net to get at all kinds of information about sports results, weather, news, job offers and consumer ratings for goods and services.

A woman's use of the net is more likely to involve greater use of e-mail as well as searches for health and medical information, map directions and religious material....

...Men were also more likely to use the net for recreation and to listen to music, gather information for hobbies and take part in online fantasy sports leagues...."

Re:Using the Internet Differently

[psymastr]

Could this suggest that there is actually a difference in the genders?

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You said the cursed words, now you're politically incorrect for LIFE!

Re:Using the Internet Differently

[dangitman]

Could this suggest that there is actually a difference in the genders?

I initially started wondering "why bother with this trivia about who uses the internet" but then I realized why such research is done. Marketing. So, the real purpose isn't about differences in the sexes. The real purpose is to find new demographics to market crap to.

Re:Using the Internet Differently

[gnovos]

Could this suggest that there is actually a difference in the genders?

Could be, could be... Or, perhaps, the difference sets of gonads may lead to a clue.

wider population

[kwoff]

The blurb was misleading. I think they're actually referring to the mass of women online, not the number. I'll clarify by slightly editing the quote. ObFatties:

There are now more [of] American women than men using the Internet ... the larger population of American women tips the balance ... larger margins than the wider population.

online poll to find out how many are online

[aleator]

to all:

please visit the link here to tell us, if you are an internet user or not.

significant, eh? ;-)

Minority Report

[mulvane]

Just another place the white male is becoming a minority. I mean come on..We have African Heritage month, Hispanic Heritage month. Not to mention some womens apprecition week/month. About the only holiday besides the generic Christmas(sorry the holiday we celebrate on the 25th of December), and Thanksgiving we really get is fathers day..And that is still generic. Where is White Male day at least for gods sake. I am really starting to feel like the minority. I don't have lawas to protect me. I can't claim racial discrimination even though I can assure you I have worked for "minorities" who have made my life hell. Look at the US NAVY for instance. There is a known "filipino mafia" in existence. Granted, its not like the olden day mafia. And now the internet! For the record, I am a married geek. And I am not from "one of those states". (should I edit my post to read causcasian?)

The best predictor is having kids.

[Anonymous Coward]

The least likely to go on line were young and single. The most likely to go on line were married people with children. So: if you aren't tied down, there are better things to do with your life than going on the internet. Once you are tied down then the internet is a viable alternative to having a life.

Re:The best predictor is having kids.

[hal2814]

Having a life? Sounds like you either don't have kids or didn't get that young single lifestyle out of your system before you did. When I had my first child, I was a person who spent a lot of time away from home. I went out frequently to bars, malls, etc. When my daughter was born, I quickly lost interest in the bars and I tended to spend a lot less time at malls. The time I did spend at malls was spend mostly at toy stores, book stores, and Chuck E Cheese. I still interact with adults on a regular basis but I spend the majority of my free time interacting with my children. Having kids isn't about being tied down. There are plenty of sitters. It's about spending time as a family.

A lot of families do have better things to do than going on the internet, but they have things they need to get done and the internet is the most convenient way to do a lot of those things.

Re:The best predictor is having kids.

[MrNougat]

Or, if you cannot acquire a life through normal channels, even if you are young, unmarried and childless.

If only the internet had been around when I was young, unmarried and childless, I may have enjoyed its life-substitute qualities. And not now be an old, married parent.

Re:The best predictor is having kids.

[blueZhift]

Heh heh! Actually, being on the internet _is_ a part of my life with the kids. Pretty soon, I'll be struggling to keep up with them. From what I can see of the generation of kids that I'm fortunate enough to have a part in raising, there isn't going to be a difference between having a life and using the internet in the near future. ;-)

LIES

[Anonymous Coward]

There are no girls on the Internets!

Newsflash!

[jcr]

For instance, it says that 21% of males visited adult websites

79% of men are liars!

-jcr

Re:Newsflash!

[Anonymous Coward]

There are two kinds of people: those who masturbate and those who lie.

Re:Newsflash!

[Anonymous Coward]

It would imply that 58% to 100% visited adult websites.

Re:Newsflash!

[Anonymous Coward]

it would mean that between 58% and 100% go to p0rn0 sites.

Re:Newsflash!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't that actually imply that 66% visited them
(assuming an even distribution of liars that is)

Re:Newsflash!

[foxtrot]

For instance, it says that 21% of males visited adult websites

79% of men are liars!

While I am willing to believe that not every male on the Internet has intentionally visited an adult website (okay, not 79%...) I refuse to believe that there's anyone, male or female, on the Internet that has never had an adult website visit them, whether via spam, or popups, or popunders, or...

Re:Newsflash!

[Anonymous Coward]

Like in Soviet Russia!

Re:Newsflash!

[Khaed]

Hey, some of us get our porn from usenet. alt.multimedia.hot.grits.binaries baby!

Re:Newsflash!

[Anonymous Coward]

I never lie...
slap, slap, slap, slap... ooooohhhhhhhhhgggggggg!

Re:Newsflash!

[xx_toran_xx]

83% of statistics are made up on the spot!

Anyone remember that film?

[eneville]

Rise of the nerds! It's finally happened!
Goes and buys some breath freshner

Re:Anyone remember that film?

[mensaboy]

Speaking of films, did anyone see that new movie "Breakback Mountain" starring Cowboy Kneel?

No wonder

[ngyahloon]

No wonder there are more porn nowadays than before:P

it does mention porn

[welcher]

and they say:

We have occasionally asked users about visiting adult websites. The overall participation rates have remained constant, from about 13% - 15%. Traditionally, three to five times as many men as women have responded positively to this question.

The numbers they give are 21% of online men saying they visit adult websites and 5% of women.

Re:it does mention porn

[ockegheim]

The numbers they give are 21% of online men saying they visit adult websites and 5% of women.

Assuming 10% of men are too dumb to find porn, that would mean that for every man admitting to visiting adult websites there are 3.3 men not admitting to it. A rate of honesty among women would mean 21% of women visit adult websites, +/- 16%

Interesting

[Sv-Manowar]

The adult websites statistic should give you a view that this survey was not very accurate, but it's interesting to see women taking more of a view in the internet nowdays compared to a few years back (even if the numbers are exaggerated). You can't help but wonder wether this will change the marketing approach of some online businesses as they adapt to the growing number of females that they can sell to.

Re:Interesting

[smoker2]

You can't help but wonder wether this will change the marketing approach of some online businesses as they adapt to the growing number of females that they can sell to.

Oh great !

Flash demos with wings ...

Simple explainations

[www.sorehands.com]

The reason why there are more married women online is because they all signed up for www.iwantanaffair.com. All the single men online are paying $30/month to www.iwantanaffair.com to meet these married women for affairs. But, then later they find out that all these hot women wanting an affair is actually Alan Ralsky and Scott Alan Bradley sitting in there underwear typing these adds and making a living at spamming (or at least until the FBI raided their houses and took there computers).

Oh dear...

[Anonymous Coward]

...you've just gone an done the dumbest thing in your life ;)

American women...?

[vrta]

"the larger population of American women tips the balance."

or...

"the larger American women tip the balance." ?

I hope *someone* told them....

[GrnArmadillo]

That the "hot 18 y/o girl" they were talking to online may not be exactly what they're expecting.... :)

always with the not reading the article...

[Vellmont]

Perhaps if you had read the article rather than the extremely poor slashdot summary you would have realized that they DID study the distribution. This may surprise you, but the paper is 55 pages long and contains more than a single headline.

Report is based on what people said, not what they

[putko]

The report is based on what people said to questioners on the phone.
They don't really know if the people were telling the truth.

People have a variety of reasons to stretch the truth in phone interviews.

A better methodology is to watch people (without them knowing that you watch) -- then you get a better idea.

So if the Pew foundation wanted to see what folks do online, working with ISPs or botnet operators to spy on internet use would give a more accurate view of things.

Another option would be to use Alexas's browser plugin.

This is only natural

[IntelliAdmin]

I think this is only natural - as time passes the net will reflect the demographic of the outside world. More and more non-tech types will join the net. The fact is most IT, and developers are still men. These were the first people to start using the net.

Your trouble is with editors at news sources

[ianscot]

It's interesting to scan down the list of titles different sources gave this same basic story. They all basically parrot back the headline the report used, but lots don't even get that right.

While several of the stories (like this one on /.) are saying a slightly higher percentage of women now use the 'net, the first bullet point on The Pew site says "The percentage of women using the internet still lags slightly behind the percentage of men." Later in their summary Pew gives the bland tag news sources probably reacted to: "In most categories of internet activity, more men than women are participants, but women are catching up. "

The report itself is far more wide-ranging, and most of its interesting content gets left out of the usual suspects. I mean, parents are more likely to be online than nonparents -- 80% to 60%, which is a BIG difference. And so on. Even dramatic stuff gets discarded in favor of a horse-race-between-the-sexes thing, here. And I'll bet Pew phrased their own headline as a gender gap thing as a way of getting the attention of news sources, too -- the problem perpetuates itself.

Why is it that general news sources touch on only one or two aspects of something like this, but the original source's press release is much richer in the same space? It's like the whole "force a dialectic on the story even if there isn't one" thing is causing reporters to discard tons of primary information to sell a faked-up conflict that isn't there. (The more tabloid a source is, the worse it gets, too. Fox makes a hell of a living pimping every story up like this.)

In a reporting world like that, reporters aren't being asked to turn stories on their heads. They're just regurgitating press releases and reinforcing stereotypes.

Re:Your trouble is with editors at news sources

[ke4roh]

Amen. Just yesterday I saw a piece on BBC World News about vitamin D deficiency (sorry, the BBC News web link actually tells enough information to be useful). The TV spot didn't even tell how much vitamin D seems to cut the risk of certain cancers in half! By contrast, the UCSD press release had plenty of useful information. What irks me is that they still send you on a wild goose chase to find a summary written by the scientists. I think the problem is not only editors wanting tabloid content, but in these cases, a public relations department whose job is perceived as being to put the best possible spin on things for the organization. Regardless of the quality of the "reporting" by the PR department, the actual reporters are going to have to get more information, and the media contact is the PR person who wrote the article, not a scientist. The reporters also talk to someone else for a differing opinion and try to show the "debate" whether there is one or not. They may then find some expert in the subject who hasn't read the study, and it goes downhill from there. It's a bad game of telephone mixed up with putting someone on the spot about a paper they haven't seen: a recipe for disaster.

Re:2005 Icarus award

[Anonymous Coward]

Every auction I've won on Evilbay in the past 6 months has turned out to be a fraud.

Maybe you should check out the seller ratings before buying first, dumbass.

So do this mean

[mrkitty]

Porn seems to be a primary use for the internet so does this mean more women are looking at porn then men?

Re:So do this mean

[HikingStick]

The vast majority of men experience their primary arousal from visual sources.

While some women may peruse pornographic images, they are more likely to prefer text based accounts and descriptions.

I do not remember the source, but the use of the Internet to access pornography is growing across all age and gender demographics.

... In a Related Story

[Spinlock_1977]

And in a related story: Female Masturbation Is Up!

American dating sites?

[happyrabit]

American nerds are lucky :)

nerds on the other side of the pool will just have to continue playing at 'Virtual Valerie'...

Except for on this site.

[JackAxe]

All we have here are few girly boys. :) *kidding*

Sexist Internet!!!11

[Anonymous Coward]

With this new gender disparity we need some quotas!

survey

[Anonymous Coward]

a/s/l

Reuters says men after facts, woman after relation

[alwynschoeman]

So those guys that are using it for facts... Be sure that at some point your wife will have relations will the guys who are not using it for facts.

And I'm unfortunately not trying to be funny.

Re:Report is based on what people said, not what t

[ericspinder]

Another option would be to use Alexas's browser plugin.

That would then be a self-selecting sample, generally a very bad idea in the wonderful world of statistics.

The report is based on what people said to questioners on the phone. They don't really know if the people were telling the truth.

Actually, telephone interviews have been proven to be very honest, and those that aren't can be weeded out by asking a number of control questions.

/. generic answer

[Anonymous Coward]

43/M/NJ(parent's basement)

We needed a study to prove this?

[HikingStick]

I don't intend this as a flame, but give me a break. In nearly every area of life women differ from men. This is not a bad thing (I can't imagine being married to someone like me!), but it flies in the face of a segment of society that wants to believe that all gender differences are learned behavior and have no basis in genetics (nurture over nature).

Anyone who has both sons and daughters knows they are different, no matter how hard you try to androgenize them.

We need to get over ourselves and realize that difference does not equate to inferiority.

Re:We needed a study to prove this?

[dptalia]

Bless you for that wisdom. After 15 years of rebelling against being female, I'm finally coming to embrace my differences from men. And you know what? It doesn't make me any less of a good programmer.

Re:We needed a study to prove this?

[DylanQuixote]

In my experience, female coders make more elegant code... I'm also amazed at how my girlfriend can explain abstract concepts (types, closures, etc) far better than I can, when she's practically a newbie programmer. :-)

Re:We needed a study to prove this?

[Burning1]

You're right. The classic test case for nature vs. nurture was a horrible fraud. I highly recommend reading this if you might have any interest in the issue.

Re:We needed a study to prove this?

[Aranth Brainfire]

Heh. Also, anyone who has taken even the most basic of sociology classes knows that it is not that simple, that you can't just toss it away like that.

"Anyone who has both sons and daughters knows they are different, no matter how hard you try to androgenize them."

Yup. Boys have those little sticky-out parts and girls don't. Parents are flat-out biased about their babies depending on their gender (both that of the baby and that of the parent). I don't have a link to the study (home on break) but there was a study done where new parents were asked to judge various aspects of their new babies. Male children were reported by the parents (especially the male parents) to be more alert, larger, firmer, more active... and the female ones less so, when in fact an impartial judgement done by hospital staff showed that there was no significant difference in the actual statistics of the babies.

Genetic differences, eh? Maybe we're just not capable of truly raising children free of any gender stereotyping, and also incapable of knowing that we're doing it.

Re:We needed a study to prove this?

[maxpublic]

Anyone who has both sons and daughters knows they are different, no matter how hard you try to androgenize them.

The problem isn't that there are differences between men and women, the problem is that a vocal minority of assholes in American society insist that the differences are always in accordance with their own pet laundry list, and anyone who doesn't conform to that list is a freak. They whine, bitch and moan about the 'differences' between the sexes, but what they really mean is that anyone who doesn't act in what they determine is a 'masculine' or 'feminine' manner should be ostracized and labeled an 'aberration' until they fall back into the party line. If their little boy decides to be a ballet dancer or their girl an auto mechanic, they shit their shorts and have a hissy fit, showing their true colors for all to see.

It's just another form of mysogynism, dressed up as 'biological fact' - facts which have never, ever been proven of course, but they just *know* that it'll happen someday! Give it time and eventually they'll prove that no woman should be an programmer, or rocket scientist, or whatever it is they think is the sole purview of men with small penises and big egos.

Max

Re:We needed a study to prove this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who has both sons and daughters knows they are different, no matter how hard you try to androgenize them.

Any one with only sons or daughters knows each of them are different without trying to androgenize them. Men and women aren't all that different past hormones and society's expectations and stereotypes.

Re:We needed a study to prove this?

[HikingStick]

Our differences go far beyond hormones and socity's expectations. Our physiologies, albiet very similar, are distinct. Neurological structures vary between males and females, as do muscular-skeleto structures.

Why deny the differences? Why not learn to celebrate them?

Re:We needed a study to prove this?

[HikingStick]

I agree that you cannot rely only on the nature side of the nature vs. nurture debate. I do believe it fair, however, to acknowledge that men and women are different by nature. Our response to these differences is what is determined by nurture.

What's this "e-mail" I keep hearing about?

[Dachannien]

Quoth the report: "Some 94% of online women and 88% of online men use email."

And just how big is the rock that the rest of these people are living under?

Re:What's this "e-mail" I keep hearing about?

[Anthony Liguori]

And just how big is the rock that the rest of these people are living under?

I think e-mail is slowly dying actually. A lot of kids don't really use it instead preferring to use instant messenger. If a kid has their own computer with broadband access, that stays on 24x7, why not just use IM?

Spam really hurts the usefulness of e-mail for a lot of users. Personally, I've reduced my personal e-mail account to just notification from various things I'm involved in (school, bills, etc.).

The thing I like so much about IM is that only people who I've explicitly allowed to contact me can actually contact me. This means no spam. With logging, and grep, it's just as useful a communications history as e-mail.

Re:What's this "e-mail" I keep hearing about?

[amrust]

Maybe the strays are people who surf the web at work, and thus consider themselves 'online', but don't have their own email account seperate from their spouse? I can't imagine it would be more than 1 or 2 percent, but that's just my guess as to the discrepancy.

Re:What's this "e-mail" I keep hearing about?

[Millenniumman]

The thing I like so much about IM is that only people who I've explicitly allowed to contact me can actually contact me.

You can do this with email too.

It's a side effect of 'the war on terror'...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what happens when you send all the boys to Irak,

Where was the study done?

[Barumpus]

I wonder if this was done in the various MMORPGs that we hear about every day. The poll taker logs in with his/her favorite character and starts asking players "Are you really a female?". Once the response of "Yes. Can I have your sword?" or "Absolutely, go any spare items or gold?" is attained, a mark goes into the Female Internet User column. If only they had proof that these are actually female players is a poll that would be more interesting.

Re:Report is based on what people said, not what t

[putko]

Only asking folks what they do won't help if people are systematically underreporting. And in this case, if men or women under/over report at different rates, you may come to wrong conclusions about who does something more/less than the other.

E.g. people will tend to underreport the "vice time" they spend online. Perhaps men grossly underreport, while women are more honest.

You might think women spend more time on vice, when in reality they don't.

You can get a better idea by spying on some people, and polling them or a representative sample. But without the extra source of information, you only know what they told you.

How would you propose to get decent results just with a telephone poll?

What I want to know is...

[TaggartAleslayer]

How many random "A/S/L????" IM's did it take to reach this conclusion?

No wonder...

[ZeroExistenZ]

...there's such an explosion in blogs and fora with these.. social bounding babbling creatures..
(I hope my gf doesn't read this. That's girlfriend, not gif.)

Re:No wonder...

[thegnu]

(I hope my gf doesn't read this. That's girlfriend, not gif.)

You lucky bastard. (I hope my gif doesn't read this)

Yeah baby...so sexy... Right, now 3, 2, 1...
Yeah baby...so sexy... Right, now 3, 2, 1...
Yeah baby....

Not really

[suso]

Don't worry, the majority of women online are actually men in disquise.

How true this cartoon is

What about the spam result??

[drasfr]

Am I the only that is amazed? (or read the full survey!) at this line that says:

Order from Spam: 6% of online men. 5% of online women.

5%, even with a margin of error is still a lot. But i know that it is probably true. At a previous business that wasn't doing spam but were sending small email campaigns we were estimating a return rate of about 3%.

I just think this number is scaringly high... the reason spam works, spammers still have work, and my 6 years old email address receives over 500 spams a day!

so, yes, am I the only one amazed by this? I would have like to have more question on this topic, like what do you buy from spam? Are you satisfied with it? How often do you buy from spam? etc...

Re:What about the spam result??

[flajann]

Of course, those who order from spam probably don't consider it as such. Which may skew the results.

Some like it hot
Some like it cold
Some like it in the pot
9 days old!

Re:What about the spam result??

[Thieflar]

At a previous business that wasn't doing spam but were sending small email campaigns...

Wow, I think I have a new sales pitch for www.v1agr4.com! I can see it now...

"Submit emaail adres here _______ we promis not to spam!!!!!!**



**may be subject to small email campaigns"

The Internet: Where Men are Men and Women are Men

[Anonymous Coward]

(See Subject)

No surprise

[vil3nr0b]

There are internet ready kitchen appliances afterall. :p

something's wrong...

[gadzook33]

And yet my own studies indicate there are fewer women on the internet dating sites.

If you want to get all technical...

[bigtrike]

It only shows that the person answering the survey said they go online. This is assuming that the person administering the survey recorded the answer properly, and the software didn't fail, etc. As far as your slashdot comment goes, this has potential merit.

Women who go online may be more likely than men who go online to answer a phone call from an unkown number. According to the last page of the PDF, they attempted to adjust for this and other factors and most likely would have added it into the margin of error.

That Explains It!

[Anonymous Coward]

I was wondering why the internet was getting worse...

listen

[ClassicComposer]

That sound you hear is all the men clicking back into chat rooms they long ago abandoned to check for girls. And they are taking this survey how? I know I wasn't asked by anyone if I use the internet. All these statistics are just like all other statistics, skewed toward the inkling of the test maker. Maybe all that their numbers really show is that more women are putting their name on the contract from their isp than men.

Where the white women at?!

[Anonymous Coward]

If Women outnumber men then how come I can't find a date?

Women now outnumber men online

[Anonymous Coward]

And I still can't find a date...

More Women!

[Anonymous Coward]

Giggity Giggity!

He was kidding...

[thegnu]

I completely agree with you, but I think he was joking. I think if he posts on Slashdot, he spends a lot of time online.

But yeah, I think the definition of 'life' has something about having kids in the there. So I'd say you probably have more of a life than I do. But I'm still going to capitalize on being young while I can.

There IS a problem in this country where people see children as a burden. It's fucked up and crazy. I commend you for enjoying your kids. Don't fuck them up. No pressure. ;-)

(I love saying that)

Awesome

[certel]

Well, that increases my chances for a date!

More women online?

[curteck]

That can't be right... It's either: A) More bots posing to be chicks. B) More desperate older, fat and ugly chicks. C) Tranies screwing up the numbers. D) A scientific study done by a bunch of guys trying to get chicks to believe its ok to use the internet without the usual stigma being pinned to them so these same guys have an easier time finding dates and move out of their mom's basement.

Re:More women online?

[VanessaDannenberg]

Ok most of the comments I've read here seem fair, and I realize you were trying to be funny...but this one line (plus a couple of previous comments) bothers the shit out of me:

C) Tranies screwing up the numbers.

A few years ago a study was undertaken, in Norway I think it was, to determine once and for all if the brain of a male-to-female transsexual (TS) is as it is claimed to be: female. The study involved examining the hypothalamuses from several TS and non-TS brains (dead of course), and took into account such things as the effect of hormones (no short- or long-term effects were noted when I last looked into this study).

I don't know the *official* results of the study, but what I last saw indicated without a doubt that a TS, barring any physical diseases that may affect that region of brain, are indeed the sex they strive to become (i.e. male-to-female TS's, myself included, are female). Some religions are beginning to agree, if you want to take that route.

To assert otherwise is akin to saying that, for example, that a person born with no legs is not a biped.

Comments like yours make me embarassed to be on the 'net at all. We're geeks - one should be right to assume that we're all scientifically minded and, by extension, unbiased in our views and understanding of the way the world and things in it work. Comments like this really do show off how horribly wrong that assumption was.

MOD PARENT TRUE

[ajwitte]

Oh wait, that's not one of the choices.

You got it

[Anonymous Coward]

I have two wonderful children both in first year university. They have never lacked for love and attention. We communicate better than 90% of other families around us. I am very proud of them.

Just because something is said in jest doesn't mean it isn't also true or even profound. (Well maybe not profound in my case.) In this case, everything revolves around the meaning of the word 'life'.

It seems that you have not yet started your family so I will offer you one piece of advice. Try to get out more. If I have one regret, it is not having socialized more. I don't mean spending every Friday night in the pub with the same five drunk buddies either. Your prosperity and happiness depend on your relationships with people. Don't lose that when you have kids. Maybe move into a jewish neighborhood. In the jewish neighborhood where I used to live, I was very impressed by the interaction between the children and the adults. I had been raised wasp and my eyes were really opened by the contrast.

And yes, I go into withdrawl when the internet goes down.

How Quaint .. (Re:Using the Internet Differently)

[Jon_E]

"This moment in internet history will be gone in a blink," said Deborah Fallows, senior research fellow at Pew who wrote the report."We may soon look back on it as a charming, even quaint moment, when men reached for the farthest corners of the internet, trying and experimenting with whatever came along, and when women held the internet closer and tried to keep it a bit more under control."

It looks like the pew report was written by a woman .. hence the skew

I think it's the same obvious reaction to most developments in technology though (cars, radios, tvs, phones) ..

#ifdef STEREOTYPICAL
men are more likely to take it apart to see how it works, and mod it to see if they can make it better/faster/newer/stronger, whereas many women are more likely to see it as a "quaint moment in time" that they can "hold closer" and eventually control (for the purpose of order .. of course)
#endif

Memo to women: playing "Minesweeper" doesn't count

[elrous0]

1999 phone call home:

Mom: "Son, I'm online!"

Me: "Mom, you just bought the computer yesterday and don't even have a ISP yet. How is that possible?"

Mom: "No, I'm doing it. I'm playing this game called Minesweeper right now."

-Eric

Yeah...

[EddyPearson]

"There are 3 forms of deciet in this world. Lies, damn Lies, and statistics" Bullshit. This is coming of the same site that tells me that 90% of ICT professionals in this world are Men. Give me a good lie, and i've got statistics to back it up.

Re:Yeah...

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you know that 86% of all data in statistics is made up?

check you stats

[cyanics]

"While a slightly larger percentage of men than women are online (68 percent vs 66 percent)" totaling 134%. So where is the other all important 34% population that is above and beyond the existing 100% population.

We must take steps to protect our fetal-browser population, bringing on babysbrowsetoo.com

Re:check you stats

[smash]

68% of all men + 66% of all women.

smash.

Desperate Housewives...

[DemonWeeping]

It ain't just a bad TV show... it's reality.

where did all the black men go?

[Anonymous Coward]

black women outpace their male peers by larger margins than the wider population."

Maybe that's because college is where people get hooked on the internet, and black men aren't going to college much.

(also they don't let you use the internet in prison)

Women just plain outnumber men!

[Kelson]

Also interesting: A higher percentage of men are online (68%) than of women (66%). The numbers have just gotten close enough that the general population ratio kicks in: "women slightly outnumber men in the Internet population because they make up a greater share of the overall U.S. population."

D'oh!

[Kelson]

Sorry about that... I think I committed a Slashdot first by reading the article but not the summary!

Yeah, if you have the right IM app.

[MacDork]

The thing I like so much about IM is that only people who I've explicitly allowed to contact me can actually contact me.

Ever heard of email filters/rules? You can do that pretty easily with any email client. Email isn't going anywhere. Personally, I prefer email to IMs because I can give more consideration to the things I say, it's easily encrypted for most email apps, I can get to your email when *I* have time for it, and I don't have to have XYZ corporations proprietary email client to receive email. Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Jabber, IRC, ... enough! I don't need or want all that crap. Just send me an email. Yes I know about Fire, Trillian, etc etc. Every one I've tried is feature incomplete to the extent that I end up having to get the 'official' version from XYZ corp to receive a voice chat, file transfer, or whatnot anyway. IM is not very useful to me because everyone I know uses a different network.

I don't think so.

[Quadraginta]

OK, you're right, I erroneously assumed the precis offered by /. and the Pew itself summarized the article.

So I read it. But I don't think you're correct. I found no evidence at all in the study of anything other than comparisons of the mean, in every question asked. No variances or standard deviations were listed anywhere in those 55 pages.

So I still think my complaint is accurate, even after reading the entire report.

vive la difference

[Quadraginta]

Nope, the study does not contain any moments of the distributions higher than the first, the mean. That's what I said.

I'm not sure why you are interested if you don't "give a damm".

I'm interested in the higher moments, I don't give a damn about the mean. Sorry that wasn't clear.

Re:vive la difference

[TapeCutter]

"I'm interested in the higher moments, I don't give a damn about the mean. Sorry that wasn't clear."

Clear now, but impossible from the data, even a bit nonsensical.

The survey asked a sample of people yes/no type questions, X people say Yes, Y% of them are female. How can that "vary" in a single sample, to get what you want they would need to take multiple samples and ask the same yes/no questions. All that extra effort would only serve to make the figure you are "not interested in" more accurate. I'm sure they would be delighted to do that for a large fee.

Re:vive la difference

[Quadraginta]

I guess I haven't been clear still...

The surveys used in this study asked way more than simple yes/no questions, of course -- if for no other reason then that they asked multiple questions, and because they asked for demographic information, like age, sex, salary, education, yadda yadda. So what you can do is put this information together and come up with distributions, for example a table in which you list the various activities that people do online, and the typical combinations of those activities, and you list percentages of men and women who do them.

That way, for example, one might find what I suspect, which is that a higher percentage of men than women do (say) 4 or more major online activities and a higher percentage of men than women do 1 or fewer online actitivies, but a higher percentage of women than men do the average number of activities, say 2 or so. You see what I mean? They might find that there are more men than women at both ends of the spectrum of online behaviour. That would be interesting.

Figuring this stuff out isn't hard. The statistical analysis is trivial, if you have the original data, which they do. And as for the "huge fee" -- c'mon, this is the Pew. A wealthy endowed "think tank." They don't do it for a fee. They don't need no stinkin' feeeees. They do it to provide news commentators and talking heads with something predictable to exclaim about. Men boast about how they're so smart and good with tools, but really it's the women who are smart enough to roll their eyes, stop and ask directions, and save the day -- Now that's an unconventional meme on the television these days, isn't it?

The Pew does this stuff to have a political influence, which they frequently do. It's the mighty academic-news-industry complex at work, ha ha... which, I suppose, is probably why they didn't do the more sophisticated analysis. They're not social scientists, they're TV-analyst content-providers. And most likely for the target audience, the very simple analysis reinforcing some conventional wisdom is all that's really wanted. But, yeah, that means it rather bores me. Which was my point.

Re:vive la difference

[TapeCutter]

You have a good point about demographics, I shall contemplate my lack of comprehension and ignorance about Pew..........doh!

If the Pew poeple have an adgenda I imagine they will keep the demographics until they find the "right" question for the answer. For example, they would probably be adverse to publishing how popular porn really is.

My Own Experience

[klept]

Based on my own experience, I would say it is true that more women then men are using the internet. And the BBC article that some have posted, also confirms with my experience. Many, oh hell, all of these women want to socialize, make a "connection", become friends, etc.. I can tell you that is what has happened to me on the MMORG COH. And yes they are really women. The emails and phone conversations we have had have confirmed this. This is getting maybe off the subject, but has it occured to anyone that maybe this is happening in general in life, both business and personal, as women have become more involved and less passive in society. Before, when it was a "man's" world, activities and functions were well defined. I mean if you went swimming or jogging, it was for that reason. Or MMORG gaming. Now with so many girls involved, it gets into more of a social thing. Yeah, I know, if guys are around girls they start chasing after them. But it seems to me it's more of the girls doing the chasing. Sort of what McLuan said about us changing from a left brained reuductionist society to holiistic right brained. And isnt that more suited to women's brain chemistry? So maybe it is naturally becoming a women's world anyhow with the technological changes that have happened. And with these changes we are getting a new perspective of things and a new way of thinking. Because after all, isnt thinking and ways to think a very polymorphis occurance. OMG did I say all that?

Heroines or heroine worshippers

[heroine]

Have a feeling most of that "majority" are really men who worship heroines and call themselves "heroine" on blogs.

Men are from /.; women are from e-mail

[PMuse]

So said Future Tense, when it covered the Pew survey last night.

Re:Report is based on what people said, not what t

[Anonymous Coward]

You are forgetting that several people may use a single pc/login/browser session. And you have no way of knowing who they really are and whether they are male or female using any of the techniques you suggest.

The Beach Boys forsaw the future

[thaerin]

and it was that there were "Two girls for every boy".

Really

[panchoguayaba]

This numbers obviously dont take in consideration that 70 % of the women online are really fat nerds pretending to be girls so you cyber with them.

Finally, there's hope!

[bannoy]

So does this mean that there's finally, actually a good chance that the hot cheerleader you're IMing is actually a hot cheerleader?

Industry Crash?

[Anonymous Coward]

My God, what will this do to the porn industry?

Won't someone *please* think about the porn industry!!?

Already proven.

[CCFreak2K]

http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&wo rd1=women&word2=men

The actual survey questions

[purplejacket]

I was curious about how they actually defined "use the internet" -- being such a net-user as I am it was hard for me to think of someone saying "no" to the question. Does that mean, use the internet _ever_? So I read their PDF then poked around on their website http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/42/dataset_displa y.asp and downloaded the phone survey used. The first question asked is gender, then, I found it very interesting that the next two questions had to do with how the respondent feels about how well the government can be trusted.
PRINCETON SURVEY RESEARCH ASSOCIATES PEW INTERNET AND AMERICAN LIFE DAILY TRACKING SURVEYNovember 2003 FINAL REVISED QUESTIONNAIRE N=1400+ adults 18 and older Field Dates: November 18 December 15, 2003 Job#: 23069 Hello, my name is XXXX and I'm calling for Princeton Survey Research. Were conducting a survey to find out what Americans think about some important issues today, and we would like to include your household. May I please speak with the YOUNGEST MALE, age 18 or older, who is now at home? (IF NO MALE, ASK: May I please speak with the OLDEST FEMALE, age 18 or older, who is now at home?)
SEX RECORD RESPONDENT SEX
1 Male
2 Female

Q1 Overall, are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things are going in this country today?
1 Satisfied
2 Dissatisfied
9 Dont know/Refused
Q2 How much of the time do you think you can trust the government in Washington to do what is right just about always, most of the time, or only some of the time?
1 Just about always
2 Most of the time
3 Only some of the time
9 Dont know/Refused
NO QUESTION 3/4
(READ) On another subject
Q5 Do you use a computer at your workplace, at school, at home, or anywhere else on at least an occasional basis?
1 Yes
2 No
9 (DO NOT READ) Don't know/Refused
Q6 Do you ever go online to access the Internet or World Wide Web or to send and receive email?
1 Yes
2 No
9 (DO NOT READ) Don't know/Refused
ASK ALL INTERNET USERS (Q6=1); NON-USERS (Q6=2-9) SKIP TO ART09:
Q7 Did you happen to go online or check your email YESTERDAY?
1 Yes, went online yesterday
2 No, did not go online yesterday
9 (DO NOT READ) Don't know/Refused
IF WENT ONLINE YESTERDAY (Q7=1), ASK:
Q8 When you went online yesterday, did you go online from HOME?
1 Yes, went online from home
2 No, did not
9 (DO NOT READ) Don't know/Refused
IF WENT ONLINE YESTERDAY (Q7=1), ASK:
Q9 Did you go online from WORK yesterday?
1 Yes, went online from work
2 No, did not
9 (DO NOT READ) Don't know/Refused
No Question 10/11
ASK ALL INTERNET USERS (Q6=1):
Q12 About how many years have you had access to the Internet?
RECORD NUMBER OF YEARS
0 Under a year
99 (DO NOT READ) Don't know/Refused

IF ONLINE UNDER A YEAR (Q12=0) ASK:
Q12.1 About how many months is that?
RECORD NUMBER OF MONTHS
99 (DO NOT READ) Don't know/Refused
ASK IF (Q7=2,9 OR Q8=2,9), DID NOT GO ONLINE FROM HOME YESTERDAY:
Q13 Do you ever go online from HOME?
1 Yes, go online from home
2 No, do not
9 (DO NOT READ) Don't know/Refused
ASK ALL WHO WENT ONLINE FROM HOME YESTERDAY OR IF YES IN PREVIOUS QUESTION (Q8=1 OR Q13=1):
Q14 In general, how often do you go online from HOME several times a day, about once a day, 3-5 days a week, 1-2 days a week, once every few weeks, or less often?
1 Several times a day
2 About once a day
3 3-5 days a week
4 1-2 days a week
5 Every few weeks
6 Less often
9 (DO NOT READ) Don't know/Refused
ASK IF (Q7=2,9 OR Q9=2,9), DID NOT GO ONLINE FROM WORK YESTERDAY
Q15 Do you ever go online from WORK?
1 Yes, go online from work
2 No, do not
9 (DO NOT READ) Don't know/Refused
ASK ALL WHO WE

w00t!

[4D6963]

More women online == more people to cyber with!

Re:w00t!

[Tidal Flame]

What makes you think you're cybering with women? :P

Re:w00t!

[4D6963]

Their webcam :-P ;-)

...mistake?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did they even check how many people play WoW? A huge amount of them are male, and they are using the internet.

Re:We needed a...(Heading off topic-personal)

[HikingStick]

I believe you are projecting exactly the kind of personal bias you decry. There will always be some who make a bad name for the rest, but please look at the rest of us as individuals, and not as some vague group. Stereotyping is bad only when it is based on false information; here I express concern that your catergorization is based on some bad experiences or some negative report on the evening news.

For the last four months, I've been trying to figure out which of my children (I have eight of them under the age of 13) have been disassembling furniture, unscrewing outlet covers, and getting into all sorts of mischief (read: anything that once was screwed together was suddenly screw-less). I must admit I was surprised when I learned that it was my five year old daughter, but I took that situation as an opportunity to better my understanding of her.

The next week, when we bought two new computer desks that needed assembly, I had her help me. She placed and tightened every screw for the project save for the one I did at the beginning to get her started. I tightened them further, but she did it all.

If you knew my socio-political views, you would already have categorized me as one of those a-holes you cannot stand, but yet my actions do not fit your stereotype. One of the tenets of my faith is "raise up a child in the way he [he/she] should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it." Many see that quote and assume it speaks only of religious indoctrination. Whereas I deeply desire that my children discover the joys of my faith (not religion), I also understand it to refer to each child's natural bent or direction. It is very clear that my five year old daughter has mechanical leanings, so it is my responsibility to help her develop those skills. I have one son who has all the markings of a sports jock, another who is emotional and prefers to read, and yet another who has no interest in sports or interpersonal relationships--he only cares about avian life. Were I to take my bird-loving boy and direct him to be a sheet metal worker, because that is a common career in my extended family, I would do him and this world a disservice.

Now, I am sure there will be points where we would not agree, but I'll let you be wrong without calling you all sorts of names if you'll do the same for me. That's right, you can say I am wrong--it's no skin off my nose. If there is one thing I hope I'm teaching all of my children it is this: their sense of value in this life should not come from the opinions of others.

[One final (and personal) note regarding your signature. My God may have died nailed to a tree, but he isn't dead anymore! I've seen him change lives. When is the last time Thor (my assumption based on your signature) did that?]

Standard Error

[eXocomp]

If you call the poll answers 0 for "not online" and 1 for "online", standard error can be calculated easily. First, standard deviation = square root of [mean of squares - square of mean]; both 0 and 1 are identities under squaring, so the mean of the squares is the same as the mean. So, stddev = sqrt(0.67 - 0.67^2) = 0.470. Standard error is calculated by dividing this by the square root of the number of samples; 0.470/sqrt(6403) = 0.00588.

That's an error of +-0.59% for both percentages, making the difference between 66% and 68% even less significant. The fact that only two digits of them are presented adds another +-0.5% error for both values, in a flat distribution. I don't know how to calculate the resultant significance, but it's pretty damned negligible.

If I've made an error, someone please correct me.

Women are wonderful flowers in the rude men world!

[everdictdotorg]

Come on, tell your opinion about the that at http://www.e-verdict.com/

No surprise

[Alien Conspiracy]

There are a lot of single mothers who use the net to socialise. That would tip the balance.

I wonder...

[SteeldrivingJon]

I wonder how many of those "women" are actually middle-aged male cops pretending to be girls in chat rooms.