Britain’s widening digital social divide

BBC News reports on the latest Oxford Internet Survey (OxIS), painting a rosy picture of online usage in the U.K., but also a widening of the gap between digital haves and have nots.

Internet use falls off sharply after the age of 55 and among people who have retired, the survey claims. Only 31% of retired people use the internet, compared with 81% of those in work and 97% of students, a pattern which has persisted since 2003. There is also a persistent but smaller gender gap, with 5% fewer women going online.

Just over half of those who lack further education are online, as opposed to 90% with a university education.

Among those with household incomes below £12,500 only 39% use the internet. OxIS also finds that 42% of students have created a profile on a social networking site such as Facebook or MySpace, but just 15% of the employed and 2% of retired people.

YouTube for grown ups

Just as BBC Four anticipated that “everybody needs a place to think”, Fora.tv brings the same values to the online video space with its aggregation of politics and world affairs. A refreshing change from girls in bikinis and UGC inspired by Jackass.

Protect and Survive: The prequel and sequel

In the 1980s, it was the voice of Barrett Homes commercials Patrick Allen who advised us on what to do when we get nuked. Today, practical advice from the Centre for Protection for National Infrastructure (CPNI). I prefer Adam Curtis’s take on it all… 

I’m off to my fallout room to draw the curtains. The combination of renewed “al-qaeda-inspired” attacks on Britain, a country in which I can no longer smoke in a public place and the Princess Di concert is too much of an emotional overload for one weekend 🙂

 But at least at the end of the world…

Social networks and the social divide

“A long-term research project has revealed a sharp division along class lines among the American teenagers flocking to the social network sites,” reports BBC News. Citing research by PhD student Danah Boyd from the School of Information Sciences at UC Berkeley, the study suggests “those using Facebook come from wealthier homes and are more likely to attend college. By contrast, MySpace users tend to get a job after finishing high school rather than continue their education.”

“Ms Boyd also found far more teens from immigrant, Latino and Hispanic families on MySpace as well as many others who are not part of the “dominant high school popularity paradigm”.

“MySpace has most of the kids who are socially ostracised at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers,” Ms Boyd said.