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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."
"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."
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.
Of course women will gather when a whole new world of "Shopping!!!!" is at their fingertips.
__
Funny adult videos
"I am a...
o woman
o man
o geek
o Cowboy Neal"
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
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%)"...
The filesystem is the package manager
With more Women online, my chances of getting laid are now bigger! Nah, who I'm kidding.... :(
... those women on dating sites were fake. So finally, I get a chance?
Just write word 'sex' to google, and you can see by the links women outnumbering men easily.
Oh sure, they say they're women.
This is the internet, the place where women are women, and some men are women too.
liqbase
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.
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.
You'd discover that 91% of the American population is dating CowboyNeal.
There are *billions* of women on the internet. .jpg ...
The catch is, their names all end in
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.
/rant
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.
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.
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.
"...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.
The view was horrible and the smell was even worse; Julie severely regretted becoming a proctologist.
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...
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:
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.
For instance, it says that 21% of males visited adult websites
79% of men are liars!
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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
"the larger population of American women tips the balance."
or...
"the larger American women tip the balance." ?
Why don't sheep shrink when it rains?
That the "hot 18 y/o girl" they were talking to online may not be exactly what they're expecting.... :)
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.
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.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
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...
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.
How many random "A/S/L????" IM's did it take to reach this conclusion?
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...
And yet my own studies indicate there are fewer women on the internet dating sites.
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.
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?