More seniors taking plunge into Internet

[nolookingca]

Jerry Seinfeld once joked about how his technophobe parents refused to use the new TV he bought them for fear the remote would set the drapes on fire.

Check with them again, Jerry. If you can catch them away from the computer.

A new Ipsos-Reid Corp. survey made public Monday reveals the use of Internet by people age 55 and older has increased 12 per cent from the period last year. According to the poll, six out of every 10 people in Canada in that age group have Internet access, up from 48 per cent in 2003.

Though well below the 86 per cent of people 54 and younger who go online, the growth rate of older Internet users is four times that of the younger group, which grew from 83 to 86 per cent in the same time period.

"That (growth) doesn't surprise me at all," said Steve MacCharles, corporate sales manager at CompuSmart Vancouver. "In the last couple of years, we've noticed older people, (aged) 60-plus, buying computers at a greater rate."

Daken Ariel, owner of Coastway System Technology, said in the past three weeks his company has done upgrades for two customers aged 70 and 72, and installed a new system for a 79-year-old woman.

Ipsos-Reid surveyed 1,000 Canadians for these findings, 151 of whom fell in the 55-plus category. There was no breakdown into sub-groups, to compare, say, Internet access by people in their late 50s compared with use by those in their 70s.

"We've always found that older Canadians are slow to adopt Internet service," said Rhys Gibb, senior research manager at Ipsos-Reid's Vancouver office. "They are less likely to be online in the first place, they're less likely to use high-speed service, and once they're online they're less likely to take part in specific online activities.

"What we're seeing here is they're really closing the gap."

In terms of Internet activities, 55-plus users lagged behind under-54s in online shopping, real-estate searches and online banking.

The one area where seniors were more active than younger users was in online investments.

Those 55 and older reported 13 per cent activity in buying and selling investments, compared with 12 per cent for those younger than 55.

Asked to explain the jump, Gibb said some of it may be attributed to parents using their teenagers' computers, but "we wouldn't expect that there would be a very large demographic shift in that group, so we wouldn't expect that to have driven the change."

Coastway's Ariel suggests one area that has spiked computer usage among seniors. "The primary motive for a lot of seniors is to keep in touch with family who live a distance away," Ariel said.

The survey, which was conducted between June 25 and July 18, is considered accurate to within three points, 95 per cent of the time.

Source: Canada.com

http://www.canada.com/technology/story.htm...82-1819dd60f8df