The latest Pew study of Internet usage suggests that different people use the Internet in different ways and in different amounts. You get the feeling that Pew would like to have us believe that the most salient way of dividing up the online population is into male and female since they title their study “How Women and Men Use the Internet” and subtitle it with this bit of gobbledygook:
Women are catching up to men in most measures of online life. Men like the internet for the experiences it offers, while women like it for the human connections it promotes.
Making human connections is not an “experience”?
I wonder if distinctions other than male vs. female might be more important to those who have reason to contemplate different groups’ usage of the Internet. For example: younger women are more likely to be online than younger men, while older men go online in greater proportions than older women. We need to cut up the world into more than two groups to do a good job of attracting them to the wonder of Web 2.0 services.
I was particularly interested to read of African American women’s increasing enthusiasm for going online:
Most strikingly, more black women, 60%, are online than black men, 50%. Over the last three years, 30% more black women have surged online, increasing from 46% in 2002. During that same time, the number of black men increased from 48% to 50%, for an increase of just 4%.
I have been gathering information on African American women’s work with and attitudes about information technology in preparation for a post I’d like to submit to the next Feminist Carnival to be hosted by Reappropriate on January 4th. This edition of the carnival will include a section focusing on the interaction of gender and race. Initially I thought I, a white and somewhat reluctant feminist, would have nothing to say on that topic. But in researching my recent post about girls and computer games, I discovered that African American girls and women approach computing from a totally different perspective than white girls and women. This sensitized me to the importance of looking beyond the gender divide in determining how to meet different people’s technological and career needs.
Thanks to inkycircus for the pointer to the Pew study. You gotta’ love a blog with the tag line “life in the girl nerd world.”
