Women, Men and the Internet

A report by Pew Internet and American Life Project reveals that while men view the Internet as an office, a library, or a playground, women see the Internet as a place to extend, support, and nurture relationships and communities.

Some of the stats include:

• 67% of the adult American population goes online, in roughly equal distribution of 68% of men and 66% of women
• 86% of women ages 18-29 are online, compared with 80% of men that age
• 34% of men 65 and older use the Internet, compared with 21% of women that age
• 62% of unmarried men compared with 56% of unmarried women go online
• 75% of married women and 72% of married men go online
• 94% of online women and 88% of online men use email

Web use does vary by gender though as the report notes, "After the events of September 11, men visited more websites to tell them about things that were happening; more women said the internet helped them find people they needed to reach."

Searching for something
Search engines are also extremely popular. About 90% of men and women who go online use search engines, and about 40% use them on a typical day. But before we take all this web work too seriously, note that the top search terms for 2005 according to Lycos were:

1. Paris Hilton (2)
2. Pamela Anderson (8)
3. Britney Spears (4)
4. Poker (10)
5. Dragonball (13)
6. Jennifer Lopez (28)
7. WWE (17)
8. Pokemon (33)
9. Playstation (24)
10. Hurricane Katrina (-)

Parenthesis notes the ranking for the term in the previous year.

Where is God in all this?
The Barna group did survey to discover that one out of every six adults (16%) spends some time visiting faith-oriented websites during a typical month. This is more common among evangelicals: 41% visit such sites, compared to 18% of all other born again Christians and 10% of non-born again Americans.

What about you?
How do you use the web? Does your experience fit with the data above? Is the Internet for you primarily a library or a network of friends?

In the archives you'll find the religion column The Internet, the Trinity an the meaning of Life.