Author Archives: Grant Blank

In 2013, 3% of British people reported being ex-users of the Internet. This is a slight decrease 2011 when 5% of the population were ex-users of the Internet.

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There is no one reason why people stop using the Internet. Perhaps most striking is the rise in the number of people who are just not interested in using the Internet, with 61% of ex-users giving this reason for their ex-Internet use (lack of interest is also the main reason cited by non-users for not being online). No longer having a computer available, and cost, remain important reasons for more than half of ex-users (57% and 52% in 2013, respectively). However, both of these reasons are less important than in 2011.

Interestingly, finding the Internet difficult to use has become a more common factor this year, possibly reflecting growing complexity of access with the rise of more devices and modes of access. Also, privacy issues (28%) and bad experiences (15%) have become more prominent among the reasons cited by ex-users. Given the small number of ex-users in our sample, it is difficult to generalise confidently about this rise in the proportion citing privacy concerns and bad experiences online, but both are plausible reasons for people moving off-line.

“Lack of interest” has become the most important reason why ex-users stopped using the Internet.

Looking at ‘lack of interest’

When asked for the single most important reason they stopped using the Internet, ex-users mainly indicated lack of interest (41% in 2013), followed by reasons related to lack of resources (‘too expensive’ 24%; ‘no computer available’ 10%) or skills (‘too difficult to use’ 8%).

The single most important reason why ex-users do not use the Internet is that they are Not Interested.

The rising importance of lack of interest may reflect a decline in the proportion of young people who are ex-users (assuming that young people are more interested in the Internet than old people): in 2011 the age category with the most ex-users was 25–34-year-olds, in 2013 the most ex-users are in the 45–64-year-old age groups.

Older people are the most likely to be ex-users of the Internet.

Are ex-users happy?

What do ex-users feel about having given up on the Internet? 37% of ex-users in 2013 said they would like to use the Internet in the future, 31% said that they missed out by not using the Internet, 19% sometimes felt left out when their friends talked about the Internet, and 14% thought they could perform better in their daily tasks if they used the Internet. Compared to 2009 the most striking difference was a decline in the proportion of ex-users who would like to use the Internet in the future, from 60% in 2009 to 37% in 2013. This suggests that the population of ex-users is becoming more comfortable with not being online. They are less likely to be offline due to moving house or changing a job and more likely to have gone offline by choice. This is consistent with the earlier graphs showing lack of interest as the main reason ex-users are offline.

Ex-users tend to feel that they are “better off not using the Internet”.

Britain has the largest Internet economy in the industrial world (measured as a percent of GDP; 8.3% in 2012), and the Internet is an increasingly important part of British society and economy. Social life is increasingly mediated and influenced by online interactions that take place through email or social media.

However, despite the inportance of the Internet both for British society and the future of the economy, there remains a major area about which little is known: the geographical variation of Internet use and online participation across the UK. This is true both for both policy-makers and scholars. Although the Office of National Statistics (ONS) produces regular reports on the British population and economy, it produces nothing about the Internet that is more detailed than reports on the 12 official regions. Even Ofcom produces little beyond broadband penetration reports. Similarly, scholarly work (Blank and Reisdorf 2012; Blank 2013) is mostly at the level of the UK as a whole.

Geographical data is crucially important because there is evidence of major geographic inequalities in access and use (e.g. Internet use in Scotland is 20 percentage points below the East Midlands). Government support for organisations like Go ON UK (and its predecessor Race Online 2012) signals that it understands the importance of mitigating digital inequalities in order to promote growth and employment. But policy currently can do little about local-scale geographic inequality because there are almost no data on the geography of the Internet. Currently no one knows how Internet use differs between Edinburgh, Manchester, London, or Cardiff. Outside of Ofcom reports about broadband penetration (an important, but limited topic), no government, private or scholarly entity has local-level geographic data on the Internet.

As part of an OII project looking at the geography of digital inequality, we will combine data from existing datasets to produce the first dataset with detailed estimates of Internet use. Specifically, we will combine the OxIS survey with the 2011 Census for England and Wales, the Scotland Census 2011, and several special-purpose datasets on important metrics of Internet use and participation (e.g. tweets, Wikipedia articles, photo uploads). This will give us a rich dataset with hundreds of measures of Internet use that we can analyze at any desired geographic level, including wards, counties (or Welsh and Scottish Councils, or Unitary Authorities), or cities.

More specifically, we intend to investigate the geography of several types of use. First is simple use or non-use of the Internet. However, we recognise that there are many ways of interacting with, using, and communicating through the Internet. We will also examine online buying and selling, social networking, banking and finance, information and entertainment seeking, politics, and communication. Multiple uses suggest greater intensity of use, which we can investigate by looking at the amount of time spend online. The Internet is a unique medium in that it allows ordinary users to create and distribute content; we will therefore explore online content production in the form of blogs, personal websites, uploading music or videos, and others.

Our research will begin with descriptive statistics and maps of the geographic distribution of uses. We will then move beyond descriptive work to multivariate, inferential studies that predict the geographic inequalities in digital Britain; using spatial statistical analyses we can examine the relative importance of issues like broadband use, technology attitudes, trust in e-commerce, or Internet experience as predictors of geographic stratification.

References

Blank, G. (2013) Who creates content? Stratification and content creation on the Internet. Information, Communication & Society 16 (4).

Blank, G., and Reisdorf, B.C. (2012) The participatory web: A user perspective on Web 2.0. Information, Communication & Society 15 (4).

Internet users remain disproportionately likely to be young, well educated, and wealthy. Consistent with these patterns, attitudes toward technology are positive among students, the employed, and Internet users generally. Non-users and the retired have more negative attitudes toward technology. One of the barriers to bringing non-users online is the fact that over half of them express fears about the Internet or technology.

When we look at lifestage, we can see relatively large differences in technology attitudes between students, employed people, and retirees on a number of dimensions. For instance, students are very likely (94% in 2013) to agree that technology makes things better, compared to 75% of employed respondents, and 60% of retirees. Students are also more likely to leave their mobile turned on in bed (83%, compared to 68% of employed respondents and only 32% of retirees). Students are somewhat more likely to agree that CCTV cameras threaten privacy (51%) than their working (36%) or retired (32%) counterparts. Retirees are the most likely to fear breaking new technologies (43%, compared to 15% of employed respondents and only 5% of students), and to feel that technology fails when it is needed (42%, compared to 16% of employed respondents and 10% of students).

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Non-users have a less positive attitude toward technology than users. Non-users are much more likely to fear that they might break new technologies (59%, compared to 14% of Internet users in 2013) and to feel that technology fails when it is most needed (59%, compared to 15% of users). Non-users are also correspondingly less likely to think that technology makes things better (44%, compared to 79% of users), and to always be connected by doing things like leaving their mobile phone turned on while in bed (37% of non-users, compared to 67% of users).

Internet users tend to have much more positive Internet attitudes than non-users.

Non-use of the Internet has declined substantially over the past two years. In 2013 about 18% of the population had never used the Internet, compared to 23% in 2011. This five percentage point decline in two years is about the same as the five percentage point decline in the four years from 2007–2011. This is real progress in addressing the digital divide, but nearly one in five remain without access, making the digital divide a continuing issue even at the basic level of access.

Internet use has climbed to 78% of the British population.

There is no single reason people give for for not using the Internet; reasons are multiple and interrelated. Cost, access, interest and skills are all important; moreover, their relative importance varies across individuals and their circumstances.

Many non-users are simply not interested in being online. In fact, nearly all non-users cite a lack of interest as one reason for not being online. Retired people also give “not for people my age” as a major reason, but that is very similar to lack of interest. Retired non-users were also more likely than employed non-users to cite lack of a computer (70% vs 59% in 2013), and lack of knowledge (67% vs 57%) as important reasons for not using the Internet. There is an element of choice at work here: lack of interest suggests that many people choose to remain offline. There is no evidence that they are opposed or resistant or restricted from going online, rather the Internet is not important to them: they just don’t care.

Non-users say that the reason they don’t use the Internet is that they are just not interested.

The percentage of Internet users with good or excellent self-rated Internet use skills has steadily increased from 60% in 2003 to 74% in 2013. Self-rated ability still varies by lifestage and gender, however, compared to 2011 the gap between men and women has shrunk from 12 percentage points to 7 percentage points (in 2013: 77% vs 70%). By contrast, big differences between individuals at different stages of their lives persist: students (92%) are more likely to say they are confident of their skills than are employed (77%) and particularly retired people (49%).

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OxIS measures Internet user’s confidence in performing important online tasks such as uploading photos and making new friends. Confidence in different types of skills varies considerably between individuals at different stages of their lives. A large majority of students feel fairly or very confident they can perform creative, critical and social (all above 80% in 2013) activities online. Students are more confident than employed and much more confident than retired individuals in all four skills types. The biggest differences are in creative (95% vs 69% vs 33%) and social (80% vs 58% vs 29%) skills.

Interestingly, 72% of retired individuals feel confident in their critical skills, whereas only about one third of them trust their creative (33%), social (29%) or technical (34%) skills. Similarly, the largest percentage of employed individuals feel confident about performing critical activities online (82%).

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Internet skills are one of the few areas where there remains a gender gap. Men are more confident than women. This is true not just in expected areas like technical skills, although that is where the gap is the largest (25 percentage points), but also in social skills where there is a 16 percentage point gap. This large gap is a little surprising. One might expect women to have more confidence in their social skills than men.

Across all Internet skills men are more likely to say they are skilled than women.

Children’s regulation shows trends that appear contradictory. Although the percentage of parents establishing rules about Internet use is declining, parents also are increasingly installing filtering software. However, opinions about the assignment of responsibility for protecting children are stable: respondents overwhelmingly think parents should be responsible.

Few people believe that children’s content should be unrestricted, and the vast majority continue to lay the primary responsibility for this with parents (98% in 2013), as well as by Internet Service Providers (81%) and teachers (78%), and increasingly by government. Whilst there has been little change in attitudes towards the role of ISPs and teachers in 2013, there seems to have been a rise in support for government intervention, with 75% of respondents agreeing that government should be responsible, compared to 66% in 2011 and 71% in 2009. This has been reflected in government initiatives aimed at protecting children from inappropriate content.

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When it comes to placing restrictions on children’s Internet use, 57% of parents in connected households claimed to have done so. Child protection groups are likely to view this as a disappointing statistic, possibly indicating that parents with children are not as concerned as the general public, and do not see as great of a risk. Alternatively, it could be that efforts to make parents more aware of online risks are not reaching all families who could benefit. Parents with children between the ages of 10 and 13 were most likely to report restricting use in some way (64% of households with children in 2013), perhaps reflecting the growing online skills combined with continued vulnerability of this age range.

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For connected households, the most commonly set rules advise children not to meet people they meet online or to give out personal information (both 84% in 2013). In both cases though, the prevalence of these rules seems to have dropped somewhat since 2007, when comparable percentages were both 95%. The proportion of parents restricting online time and restricting access to certain sites also seems to have declined since 2007: time restrictions have dropped from 88% to 81% of households, site restrictions have dropped from 93% to 78%. This may be a consequence of greater use by children at home and with friends, making restrictions more difficult to enforce. On the other hand, there appears to be a slow but steady upward trend in the adoption of parental control filters, rising gradually from 35% in 2007 to 44% in 2013.

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Journalistic coverage of privacy issues has mushroomed and there is a generally high level of concern about privacy. In 2013 almost half (47%) of Internet users said they were concerned that the use of computers and the Internet threatens privacy.

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Despite this, about 70% of Internet users are comfortable giving out their email address and name online, and about 50% are comfortable giving out their postal address and date of birth. This might be surprising in light of media coverage of the threats of credit card theft and identity theft, but is not necessarily contradictory, as users generally trust Internet service providers and benefit from people finding them online. However, they do illustrate the complexity of privacy issues. It might be that the experiences of users have been generally positive, finding that e-commerce and online shopping, for example, work well and are reasonably low risk; many activities of value, such as shopping, would not be possible without the ability to trust a provider with certain information, such as your name and address.

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British people spend an average of 11.3 hours per week online at home; this has been roughly stable since 2007 (average 10.9 hours a week at home). By contrast, use of the Internet at work has decreased from 7.3 hours per week to 5.5 hours per week over the same period. Use of the Internet at school has not changed since 2007.

In 2013, we added the category of using the Internet ‘on the go’, and users indicate spending over two hours per week online when they are mobile. The continuing centrality of the home and the rise of Internet use on the go are two clear trends to note and watch for in 2015.

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Total hours spent online. This is a number everybody wants, but one that we don’t supply. Why? There is a measurement problem. We find that people are very bad at accurately estimating the amount of time they spend, whether it is time spent on social network sites or total hours spent online a week. This is quite apart from the problem that people may not actually realise they are online, for example when when using certain features on a mobile phone. We don’t think the numbers that other organisations collect are accurate or reliable measures.

Benefits from use of the Internet appear more likely to accrue to people with higher household incomes. That pattern exists across all four benefits measured here: saving money, finding out about an event, finding health information, and finding a job. This raises the interesting question, why are lower income people less likely to realise benefits from Internet access? Do they have fewer opportunities presented to them? Are they using the Internet less effectively?

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In terms of lifestage, over 50% of all three lifestage groups (ie students, employed and retired) are likely to have saved money or found out about an event via the Internet. However, students and employed people are more likely to have done so compared to retired respondents. Employed (45% in 2013) and retired (39%) people are more effective than students (32%) at finding information to improve their health, perhaps because they are more focused on their health as they age. Employed people (34%) are much more likely to have found a job compared to students (16%) and retired people (3%). Except for finding health-related information, retired people are the least likely to benefit from the Internet.

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Regardless of the benefit considered, people with more education are more likely to take advantage of that benefit. The effect here is very strong. People with a university degree are more than twice as likely to be able to benefit from Internet use compared to people with no education. In the most striking case, compared to people with no educational qualifications, respondents with a university degree are over seven times more likely to have found a job using the Internet (36% vs 5% in 2013). This echoes research on the ‘knowledge gap’—a finding that even when presented with the same information, people from more educated households are likely to benefit more, and thereby reinforce or exacerbate knowledge gaps in society.

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Almost 90% of ex-users and almost 70% of non-users said they have a link to the Internet if they need it, but their access is indirect via another, proxy user. Proxy access may not be quick access or high quality access—depending on someone else means going online at their convenience—but it can make the Internet accessible to many who would otherwise be offline completely.

These issues are important as the UK government embarks on tests of a “digital by default” strategy. Given the value of personal assistance, one critical problem in addressing the digital divide remains focused on helping more isolated non-users who could not otherwise find a proxy user, or get the help they require to move into the online world.

Almost 90% of ex-users and 72% of non-users have access to the Internet via proxies.

Although a vast majority of ex- and non-users claim to have proxy access to the Internet, in 2013 only about a third of them reported actually having asked proxy users for help in the past year. This suggests that proxy users could play an important role in bringing the Internet experience to non-users by offering their help explicitly.

Only about one-third of non-users or ex-users asked a proxy for assistance.