What Influences Non-Use of the Internet in Britain and Sweden?

Gothenburg.
The next speaker in this AoIR 2010 session is Bianca Reisdorf, whose interest is in the non-adoption of the Internet in the UK and Sweden, building on longitudinal data from the Oxford Internet Surveys and the World Internet Institute. The two countries developed quite differently: Britain is now at around 70% Internet access, while Sweden is ahead at some 84% of citizens with access.

This means there are some 30% of non-users in Britain, and 16% in Sweden. Who are they, why have they remained offline, and what are the (economic, social, political) effects for them? Does it disadvantage them in their work life, too, as it may keep them from developing important skills or professional networks? There may be disadvantages, Bianca says, but these need to be further researched.

One of the key factors determining non-use is age: users above 55 years of age are substantially more likely to have remained offline than others. Other factors include education, occupational status, and household income; the better any of these are, the more likely people are to use the Net. Indeed, it seems that there are at least two distinct groups of likely non-users: people with lower income and lower education, and people who are older, living on their own, and without kids in their households. This is similar in both Britain and Sweden, except that kids are less important a factor in Sweden.

Almost everyone below 25 is online, in both countries, while a larger percentage of people above 55 are non-users. So, what about the age range in between? There is a fair number of non-users at that age range in Britain, especially (15%, compared to 3% in Sweden), perhaps reflecting particular factors in that country – marital status, education, occupational status, and household income are each important predictors of Internet use for British citizens in that age group. (Of the small number of Swedes in this group, it appears to be mainly single females who have remained non-user.)

This is only a preliminary overview, though – further research is necessary to uncover additional variables, and the effects of non-use also need to be examined further.