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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."
However, I have my own doubts about correct this research is -- All that is fine, but any research that doesn't mention porn must be flawed
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.
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.
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)
You'd discover that 91% of the American population is dating CowboyNeal.
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.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
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.
Business Voyeur
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.
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.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
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.
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.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
I have to admit it got me hot and bothered anyway...
this sig deleted by another sig
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...
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.
... and then they built the supercollider.