BlackChampagne Home

In association with Amazon.comBuy Crap! I get 5%.
Direct donations to cover hosting expenses are also accepted.

Site Information
--What is Black Champagne?
--Cast of Characters & Things
--Your First Time.
--Design Notes
--Quote of the Day Archive
--Phrase of the Moment Archive
--Site Feedback
--Contact/Copyright Info

Blog Archives
--Blogger Archives: June 2005-
--Old Monthly Archives: Jan 2002-May 2005

Reviews Section
Movie Reviews (153)

Ten Most Recent Film Reviews:
--Infernal Affairs -- 5.5
--The Protector/Tom Yum Goong -- 6
--The Limey -- 8
--The Descent -- 6
--Oldboy -- 9.5
--Shaolin Deadly Kicks -- 7
--Mission Impossible III -- 7.5
--V for Vendetta -- 8.5
--Ghost in the Shell 2 -- 8
--Night Watch -- 7.5

Book Reviews (76)
Five Most Recent Book Reviews:
--Cat People -- 4
--Attack Poodles -- 5
--Caught Stealing -- 6
--The Dirt, by Motley Crue -- 7.5
--Harry Potter #6 -- 7

Photos Section
--Flux Photos
--Pet Photos (7 pages)
--Home Decor Photos
--Plant Photos
--Vacation Photos (12 pages)

Articles
See all 234 articles here.

Fiction
Original horror and fantasy short stories.

Mail Bags
Index Page

Features
--Links
--Slang: Internet
--Slang: Dirty
--Slang: Wankisms
--Slang: Sex Acts
--Slang: Fulldeckisms
--Hot or Not?
--Truths in Advertising

Band Name Ratings
(350 Rock Bands Listed)
FAQ -- Feedback
A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- X -- Y -- Z

Hellgate: London
--The Unofficial HGL Site
--The Hellgate Wiki

Diablo II
--The Unofficial Site
--Flux's Decahedron
--Middle Earth Mod

Locations of visitors to this page

Powered by Blogger.

BlackChampagne -- no longer new; improvement also in question.: Male vs. Female Internet Use.



Tuesday, January 10, 2006  

Male vs. Female Internet Use.


This article has a catchy title and an interesting premise, and I was all set to endorse it until I realized it was just stereotype/cliche-filled bleh, with two massive holes. Behold: Men are from Google, Women are from Yahoo!
According to a recent report from Pew Internet and American Life, women view the Internet as a place to extend, support, and nurture relationships and communities.

Men tend to see it as an office, a library, or a playground--screw the community, this is about function not family.

The report found that women are more enthusiastic communicators, using email in a more robust way. Not only sending and receiving more email than men, women are more likely to write to family and friends about a variety of topics, sharing news, joys and worries, planning events, and forwarding jokes and stories.

While both sexes equally appreciate the efficiency and convenience of email, women are more likely than men to value the medium for its positive effects on improving relationships, expanding networks, and encouraging teamwork at the office.
  • 67% of the adult American population goes online, including 68% of men and 66% of women.
  • 86% of women ages 18-29 are online, compared with 80% of men that age.
  • 34% of men 65 and older use the Internet, compared with 21% of women that age.
  • 62% of unmarried men compared with 56% of unmarried women go online
  • 75% of married women and 72% of married men go online
  • 61% of childless men compared with 57% of childless women go online
  • 81% of men with children and 80% of women with children go online.
  • 52% of men and 48% of women have high-speed connections at home
  • 94% of online women and 88% of online men use email
Okay, we've all heard this 5000 times in our lives. Women are social creatures and like to communicate, men like to be amused and find information, etc, etc. Never before has a survey done so much to validate conventional wisdom and reinforce gender stereotypes. Where was the mention of women searching out recipes and fabric patterns while men looked at sports and auto parts sites?

Sarcasm aside, what really soured me on this one were two things they didn't even mention. Gaming, which is a huge online activity for many people of both genders, and, PORN which is said to be responsible for between 10-50% of all bandwidth consumption in the world. How can any Internet use survey, especially one comparing men and women, not mention porn and expect anyone to take it seriously? Don't men view porn like 50x more than women? Shouldn't that be a huge factor in the useage time stats?
Comments:

Porn counts under the "library" section.


 

Oh, they forgot file sharing too, the other major portion of internet use. Which often goes hand in hand with porn.


 

The in-ter-net is for porn... The in-ter-net is for porn... :)


 

One of the interesting things they also could have mentioned is that female internet users are slightly more probable to play internet games, which is rather surprising considering the game industry as a whole.


 

I want to see a detailed survey on the gaming time breakdown. I often hear that women play as many or more games online than men, and that they're mostly playing card games or word games or other such things. Which they'd have to be, since when it comes to the more hardcore PC games like shooters, RTS, MMORPGs, etc, it's like 95% men.

What's the methodology of those surveys anyway? Are we talking total number of games (which would compare a woman playing 10 games of Hearts in an hour to a guy playing 10 hours of a single MMORPG a day?) or total time spent or what? And do console games count, if they go online or not? Xbox Live = online, GTA3 by yourself for 6 hours = not online?

Basically, I think men, young men at least, play far, far, far more games, time-wise, than women of any demographic, and I think the surveys saying otherwise are fundamentally flawed in some way. And no, I do'nt have anything to back that up with other than personal experience.

BTW, I'm certainly not criticizing women for not playing as many games; they're out getting a college education and bettering themselves while men are stealing virutal cars and filling endless empty hours grinding towards lvl 60 on WoW.


 

I'd always thought MMORPGs to be the exception to the rule. I'd imagine there'd be a lot more women who play, say, EverQuest than Counter Strike.


 

I disagree with your glib 95% men on MMORPG's. I think these days it's more like 80% men and 20% women. I meet a lot more female gamers on-line then I did 10 years ago.

Yeah, FPS in particular and games in general are still dominated by guys, but for RPG's in general at least, I think there's a lot more women playing and spending a lot of time playing, then you think. The biggest difference is that women don't talk (brag) about it as much, aren't on forums as much, etc. - not to mention, they don't go around advertising they're female, and even if they do, half the male gamers don't believe it, so why bother. There's nothing more annoying than saying you're a gal and having dozens of teen-age boys go "Oh RLY?? I thought no girls ever played WoW, I bet you're really a guy in drag." :D


 

Post a Comment << Home

Archives

May 2005   June 2005   July 2005   August 2005   September 2005   October 2005   November 2005   December 2005   January 2006   February 2006   March 2006   April 2006   May 2006   June 2006   July 2006   August 2006   September 2006   October 2006   November 2006   December 2006   January 2007   February 2007   March 2007   April 2007   May 2007   June 2007   July 2007   August 2007   September 2007   October 2007   November 2007   December 2007   January 2008   February 2008   March 2008   April 2008   May 2008   June 2008   July 2008   August 2008   September 2008   October 2008   November 2008   December 2008   January 2009   February 2009   March 2009   April 2009   May 2009   June 2009   July 2009   August 2009   September 2009   October 2009   November 2012  

All site content copyright "Flux" (Eric Bruce), 2002-2007.