Online America

American Demographics, March 1, 2001

This online gender gap forms early. A study of teenagers by Media Metrix found that boys are much more likely to download software and play games online. Girls, by contrast, are more interested in reading online magazines, doing homework, and staying in touch with their e-buddies. Their parents would probably be shocked to find that American teenagers actually spend about 30 percent less time on the Web than adults. Less surprising, perhaps, is that boys visit more pages than girls. While girls view an average 271 pages per month, boys speed-click through 301 pages - no doubt thanks to male weaning on TV remotes.

As adults, both sexes frequent age-appropriate Web sites. Media Metrix reports that women in their 20s and 30s patronize sites offering relationship and parenting information relevant to that life stage. In their 40s, they shift to hobby and leisure sites featuring gardening and cooking content. Women in their 50s, meanwhile, turn to Web sites offering advice on financial investments and health care.

"It's like holding a mirror to a woman's life," says Anne Rickert, a measurement analyst at Media Metrix in Manhattan's Silicon Alley. "At every stage, her online preferences provide a readable map of her offline interests." When Rickert first described that correlation at a meeting of analysts last summer, she remembers leaving them wide-eyed. "What surprised us was the degree of synergy between online and offline activities," she recalls. "It was amazing."

REAL VERSUS VIRTUAL WORLDS

In other ways, too, people behave online much like they do in real life - a pattern that's contrary to early predictions that Web use would be categorically different from day-to-day life. Futurists once maintained that Internet users would form virtual communities to the exclusion of real-world relationships. They'd buy products throughout the year rather than just at Christmas. They'd meet and date and have cyber-sex to their hearts' content.

Well, it hasn't quite turned out that way. Although early research claimed that the Internet contributed to the social isolation of enthusiasts, more recent studies have countered that argument. The Pew Internet & American Life Project reports that Americans who use the Internet visit friends or family members just as often as those who don't. A survey for America Online and American Demographics indicates that social relationships are actually strengthened by online use (see Forecast, December 2000). Harris Interactive has found that 48 percent of people say they communicate with their friends and family more often because of the Internet, compared with only 3 percent who said that their contact decreased.

Many of the nation's shoppers also behave online a lot like they would at the local mall: buying the same kinds of products from the same merchants. Almost half of all U.S. adults with Internet access now purchase goods and services online, according to Scarborough Research, and the highest concentration are the earliest adopters. In a list of 64 major metros, the top-ranked ones also happen to be the nation's yuppiest markets (Washington, D.C., Seattle, San Francisco) where about 60 percent of Internet users are also considered "cyber-shoppers." In other words, they resemble an aging version of GWGs - except with more money and kids. Half of these shoppers possess a gold or platinum credit card. Eight of 10 of the top online shopping clusters are predominantly populated by married couples with children.