Old reading habits hard to change

Pew, the organisation that publishes research about how the Internet is used in the US, will release a report latter this year called ‘a wired baby boomer’. An article, sourced from Associated Press, has given an insight into some of the findings.

It would seem that the older tech elite (these are people who are very active users of PCs and the Internet), ages 42 to 62, are still active users of older media. The article says‘49% of this group go online for news on a typical day, but many more, 60%, pick up the newspaper. By comparison, 39% of the younger tech elite, ages 18 to 29, get news online and 42% read a newspaper.’ I guess this must be good news for the print media! The report’s author explains these differences by saying ‘The pattern reflects social conditioning’. You cannot go to far wrong with that explanation.

The other finding from the research is that ‘9% percent of the older tech elite have paid for online content, just above the average of 8% for all Internet users. By contrast, 13% of the young tech elite have paid for content’ the explanation for this difference is nothing to do with young peoples’ inherent honesty but their greater likelihood to purchase online.