Golden IT winner Larry Wilmott (90) with overwall winner Dorothy Harrington (76). Image courtesy of Google.
The 2011 Silver Surfer Awards demonstrated the ever-growing reach of the internet. Some groups traditionally perceived to be less technologically adept are catching up.
Dorothy Harrington, the overall winner of Google’s 2011 Silver Surfer Awards, sold her home in Kilkenny by listing the property online rather than using an agent.
It’s an impressive feat for a 76-year-old grandmother of four who says she was “frightened” of computers until recently. So what else are older Irish people doing online?
83,000 older people on Facebook
There are more than 83,000 Irish people aged 64 or older using Facebook, according to the social network’s advertising statistics. Just under 41,000 of these users identified themselves as male while 39,000 identified themselves are female.
The latest (2010) statistics from Eurostat show that 19% of Irish people between the ages of 65 and 74 have used a search engine to find information – an increase of eight percentage points from 2006 figures.
Older Irish people are also starting to warm to the idea of internet shopping. Some 8% of Irish 65 to 74-year-olds reported having used the internet to purchase goods in the past year – that’s up from 3% in 2006, but still behind some of our European neighbours. By contrast, the same cohort in the UK figure is 32%, while 29% of older people in Denmark and 19% of older people in France had shopped online in the past 12 months.
In 2010, 6% of this age group in Ireland reported using the internet for online banking – an increase from 2006 when just 2% engaged in internet banking.
While older people are using the internet less than other adult age groups, the evidence shows a steady increase.
