Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
The Internet

Females Outnumber Males Online 299

westcoaster004 writes "In news which may surprise some Slashdot users, females have been found to outnumber males online in the U.S. according to a report, and for some time. The statistics for Canadians show a slightly greater number of male users."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Females Outnumber Males Online

Comments Filter:
  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15, 2007 @09:34AM (#18741081)
    It wasn't the first, and it definately won't be the last.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15, 2007 @09:34AM (#18741091)
    Males lying about being females outnumbers males telling the truth online.
  • Definition (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tsa ( 15680 ) on Sunday April 15, 2007 @09:37AM (#18741111) Homepage
    Before I believe any of that I want to see what they define as 'female' and 'online'.
    • Before I believe any of that I want to see what they define as 'female'

      Yup, most slashdotters have a problem defining it. I'll define it as "someone who has different stuff than you between their legs" and leave you to ponder what it possibly might look like;)
  • by b1t r0t ( 216468 ) on Sunday April 15, 2007 @09:39AM (#18741127)
    I don't see any age distribution in TFA (just "over 3"), but I have a sneaking suspicion that 2/3 of those are over the age of 50. In other words, granny discovered e-mail and how to order knitting needles online.
    • Re:Age distribution? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by nwbvt ( 768631 ) on Sunday April 15, 2007 @10:14AM (#18741401)
      You obviously don't know any teenage/pre-teen girls who have suddenly found out how easy it is to spread gossip using things like AIM, myspace, blogs, YouTube, fansites, etc. I have a sixteen year old sister who the net all the time. The Internet is becoming an increasingly social place, meaning its no longer all geeks downloading blueprints of the Enterprise.
      • Re:Age distribution? (Score:5, Informative)

        by nwbvt ( 768631 ) on Sunday April 15, 2007 @10:20AM (#18741433)
        And to back that up, from TFA:

        Researchers that survey only the adult population still find that a greater percentage of males go online. MORI Research, for example, reported that as of March-April 2006, 73% of adult females and 79% of adult males went online. The Pew Internet & American Life Project reported that as of February-April 2006, 71% of adult females went online, vs. 74% of adult males.
      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        And goddam it they've ruined the nice little Internet we had. With preteen/teenage girls comes all the dirty old men preying on them, and the porn, and trash. Guys thinking I'm a girl, wanting to join my buddy list. FUck you, pervs! It's just too much!

        Teens. They will be the death of our society! Mark my words! Create something cool.. but don't invite the teens!

        Can we go back to downloading blueprints to the enterprise? :-)

        sri :-)
        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          Can we go back to downloading blueprints to the enterprise? :-)
          To the enterprise?

          Damn! All this time I was downloading plans of the Enterprise and you had plans to get to the real one?



          Got a link?

      • Sorry, but I think for the most part, they are probably using MSN Messenger, and MySpace... MSN being the default, and MySpace being the culmination of every advancement in communication ability through technology (*NOT*)...

        [RANT]
        Okay, we start with bbsing, local, community oriented... Actual get togethers, regular parties, etc... then the early internet, IRC, ICQ, and AOL a little more remote and disconnected, but still some actual community and real people, generally those you already know in real lif
        • Who uses MSN? I know 2 people who use MSN Messenger, and it's because AIM doesn't work on their computers. AIM is the default instant messenger. Any time you ask someone "what's your sn?" and they write it down, there is never an @ sign and it's not all numbers, meaning it's not Jabber, MSN, Yahoo, or ICQ. It's AIM.
    • by CristalShandaLear ( 762536 ) on Sunday April 15, 2007 @10:25AM (#18741487) Homepage Journal
      I don't see any age distribution in TFA (just "over 3"), but I have a sneaking suspicion that 2/3 of those are over the age of 50. In other words, granny discovered e-mail and how to order knitting needles online.

      And just how is this funny? Granny is no less a woman with her knitting needles than the young, hot, smoking blond of the average slashdotter's hopeless fantasies and probably has more sex than the average slashdotter anyway (with any being more than none).

      And why isn't Granpa online and Granny is? Is Granny smarter than Granpa? Was Granny more able to adapt to online culture better? Why? Isn't it enough that she is able to search, navigate, compare, order and pay for her purchases? Isn't it enough that now she talks to her grandchildren every week through IM or email than never with snail mail and not being able to afford cross-country visits?

      The fact that she is able to make use of the internet to improve or enjoy her life isn't enough? Granny has to be a programer, 3l33t haxor, network admin and security expert too? Does Granny have to be Uber Elder Geek to be counted as an online personage?

      For people who are supposed to be geeks, you and the people who modded you up seem to be awfully narrow minded. Tech is not for just the people you think are worthy enough to be counted.
      • Re:Age distribution? (Score:5, Informative)

        by MollyB ( 162595 ) * on Sunday April 15, 2007 @10:43AM (#18741629) Journal
        Thank You, Dear. I'm not a granny but old enough to qualify, and I just switched to Ubuntu 'cause SuSE just didn't work right. I'm a former Windows NT-era sysop who detests Microsoft, with just enough Unix (Solaris and Sun OS) experience to have done some C-shell scripting and a tad of VB Script in the .ASP days (which I have all forgotten). Many other slashdotters wish that me (specifically) and boomers (in general) would hurry up and croak. Thanks again for your patience and humanity. May your goodwill redound to you thrice over, someday...
        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by walt-sjc ( 145127 )
          I have a 35 year old sister-in-law that became a grandmother last year, so it really doesn't take much to be "old enough to qualify." :-)
      • It's about time this got said! I have a dream ... where we all stop pigeonholing each other ....
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by wagadog ( 545179 )

        Brava! My mom (a granny eight times over) took up computing for the very reasons the OP chose to denigrate: family communications and yes, knitting patterns. Our favorite is Knitty [slashdot.org] because of its "open source" policy.

        Her latest project has been to dub all of the family home movies to DVD's, first for archival purposes, and now she's editing them down to the funniest moments by theme and/or subject, and dubbing music tracks over them.

        While visiting my sister in New York, one of her teenage grandso

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        Right on--my 80 year-old mother has been on the net for several years. My retired dad, however, never did get into computers. Mom would just print out interesting articles or email for him to read.

        But slashdotters have no one to blame but themselves if this is the case--how many of you worked to get your moms on-line so you could email pictures of the grandkids?

        Personally, I think many women are attracted to the internet because of the social interaction: email, texting, shopping, etc. The stereotypical int
  • by mangu ( 126918 ) on Sunday April 15, 2007 @09:40AM (#18741137)
    I, for one, welcome our new online female overladies!
  • Baaaa... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Mr. Underbridge ( 666784 ) on Sunday April 15, 2007 @09:40AM (#18741145)

    "The statistics for Canadians show a slightly greater number of male users."

    THis is compensated by a surprising number of sheep.

  • by BugDoomBug ( 965033 ) <bug@doombugmedia.com> on Sunday April 15, 2007 @09:42AM (#18741159) Homepage
    Males Pretending to be Females Outnumber Males Online

    Fixed

    Why does this remind me of an old IRC saying.....

    "Welcome to IRC, where the Men are Men, the Women are Men, and the 14 Year Old Girls are FBI Agents"

  • Wow (Score:5, Funny)

    by pavon ( 30274 ) on Sunday April 15, 2007 @09:45AM (#18741187)
    I didn't know the FBI had that many agents.
    • I didn't know the FBI had that many agents.
      And it's not just FBI agents anymore. Every backwoods local police department puts a few keystone cops on the intraweb now posing as 14 year old girls. Cops love it because it's easy, they barely have to leave their desks, and it makes for some great headlines.
  • Not supprising (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ozamosi ( 615254 ) on Sunday April 15, 2007 @09:48AM (#18741201) Homepage
    I don't think this is supprising. Females are more social creatures than males. I won't say wheather this is biologic or social, but right here, right now, most of them are. Females in their teens are known to talk on the phone FOREVER. Females are known to sit around and gossip all the time. Computers are now straightforward enough to use so that a new user don't have to figure out how it works (typical male behaviour), but instead, can go straight to $chat_network or $social_website and start to gossip. They use internet because it helps them do what they like to do outside of computers.

    Males, on the other hand, like to play with stuff, build stuff, etc. Maybe the internet isn't that appealing to that crowd in the same way. Or maybe it is, but males actually get "done" with the internet, just like we usually finish a phone call in one minute, and go on to do something else instead.

    Of course, that doesn't mean that there are more female hackers than male - hackers are people who use internet (and computers in general) to build stuff, and more males want to build stuff than females, and thus, there should be more male hackers than females.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15, 2007 @09:53AM (#18741237)
    ...to outnumber males online"

    And I still can't find a date!

    Posting as AC because I'm embarrased as hell.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15, 2007 @09:53AM (#18741241)
    Females outnumber males online. Night elves outnumber Orcs and Dwarves, but Goblins received an unexpected surge in popularity after Draenei were nerfed in the last update. Figures for Tauren have remained more or less stable, and no figures for Trolls are available as they ate the census-takers.
  • by alexhs ( 877055 ) on Sunday April 15, 2007 @10:03AM (#18741329) Homepage Journal
    on Slashdot we're still between real men !

    OMG ponies !
    • and I guess this means that the average /.er is now getting more and more requests to fix teh Intertubey thing, when it gets stuck. At least if any of us ever actually got out and saw daylight and, you know, met any girls...

      Taco, looks like it's time to bring back the pink css theme.
  • by nurb432 ( 527695 ) on Sunday April 15, 2007 @10:04AM (#18741337) Homepage Journal
    Not a slam on 'stay at home moms' in the least, but there are more of those then 'stay at home dads', so just purely by the #'s there is a better chance of them finding some time to be online during the day then the males of the population.
  • by UnRDJ ( 712762 ) on Sunday April 15, 2007 @10:04AM (#18741341)
    Percentage of female internet population on myspace.com: 99%
    Everywhere else: 1%
  • Slashdot is Canadian!
    • by erbmjw ( 903229 )
      Come on ... slashdot's not polite enough to be Canadian. ;)

      Plus if it was Canadian we'd get a lot more hockey related stories and comments :D
      • Come on ... slashdot's not polite enough to be Canadian. ;)

        Plus if it was Canadian we'd get a lot more hockey related stories and comments :D
        Good call, eh! Hey CmdrTaco we need a YROI (Your Rights On Ice) Section.
  • by LighterShadeOfBlack ( 1011407 ) on Sunday April 15, 2007 @10:09AM (#18741379) Homepage
    Figures also show that 90% of females online are 18, horny and want to sex you up.
    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by lilfields ( 961485 )
      Additional figures show that 95% of Slashdotters still don't have a chance.
      • by jd ( 1658 )
        I think you may have typod. Shouldn't that be 99.95%? (We know about CmdrTaco's SO, but just try to name one other case.)
  • by Ogemaniac ( 841129 ) on Sunday April 15, 2007 @10:16AM (#18741413)
    1: There are more females than males

    2: Women are more likely to attend college than men. Virtually all college students are required to use the internet while they are there, and at least some will keep up the habit later.

    3: Women are more likely to have desk jobs or other indoor jobs, which again often exposes them to the internet.

    That being said, I think time spent on the internet is a much greater measure. I bet men spend far more time on the internet than women, despite the apparent data that says women dabble with it more often.
    • by Tal0n ( 695067 ) on Sunday April 15, 2007 @10:34AM (#18741567)
      Agreed

      Yeah, jokes aside, I don't know about you guys(girls?) but I probably have as many, if not more female friends online than males. Obviously, all of the male geeks are online, but not all of the rest of the guys. On the other side, almost all of the females are online.

      TFA doesn't say what "online" means (unless I'm dumb and missed it), so that kind of makes this entire discussion moot. Online gaming? Social Networking? Email? Internet Browsing? Voip? Online shopping? Without breaking that down by activity, that's kinda almost like a really, really expensive way to find out that there are more women then men.
      • by Alsee ( 515537 )
        doesn't say what "online" means

        I believe the standard was any contact with any sort of internet activity at all at least once in the last 30 days. Spending 5 minutes online, checking a single web page, just to see a picture of Britney Spears bald, three weeks ago, from a computer at a friend's house, would qualify.

        It's tempting to say that males are going to still solidly hold the lead on total cumulative hours on the internet, but remember... for every guy sitting here on Slashdot for some obscene number o
  • Hmmm (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jeevesbond ( 1066726 ) on Sunday April 15, 2007 @10:18AM (#18741419) Homepage

    "For girls who have grown up with technology, there is no significant gender gap in internet usage," said eMarketer senior analyst Debra Aho Williamson. "The rise of activities that are particularly appealing to young females, such as social networking, will result in even greater usage."

    This reminds me of my 12 year old neice who sites on MSN for hours at a time jibba-jabbin to her friends, whilst her brother would rather watch Hockey on TV.

    This is good news for those people who've recently been ranting about there not being enough [meganmcdermott.com] women [mezzoblue.com] in web design [burningbird.net], and trying to work out the reasons why. With more women now online than men, the balance will hopefully be redressed (when that generation gets off MSN and wants to do something useful with their lives).

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by prelelat ( 201821 )
      Problem with the group of users your talking about is that they are just using the internet/computer for social jibba-jabbin(I like your expression) while back in the day when I used the computer I was poking around finding where things lay on the computer and being interested in how the application works. I think a greater amount of women will join the geek world which is good for everyone(hate going to work with a bunch of guys, I need a change up sometimes). I just don't think that the number of wome
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by bogjobber ( 880402 )
      I doubt it. There is no reason to believe that more women will go into web design just because they use the internet a little more. If women use phones more often, does that mean women are more likely to become electrical/communication engineers? If women take prescription drugs more often, are they more likely to become chemists? Most people don't really give a shit about how things work, just that they work. The gender gap in engineering/science/technology has much deeper roots than that.
  • by ZeeExSixAre ( 790130 ) on Sunday April 15, 2007 @10:30AM (#18741525)
    The reason for this is likely Facebook and Myspace. These social networking sites make is really easy to simply log onto one site, do all the chit-chat with 10-20 people that would normally take 5 minutes per person, and then log off. When I go to the computer lab at my university, a quick peek at women's computer screens shows that 7 out of 10 computer screens are of Facebook, and 2 out of 10 are of Myspace. The remaining 10% are of actual class webpages. On the other hand, 6 out of 10 male computer screens are of ESPN, NCAA, or Facebook/Myspace. Okay I didn't really look at the guys at all.
  • duh. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by artjunk ( 1088603 ) on Sunday April 15, 2007 @10:31AM (#18741537)
    um, hello? This is news? One word - "shopping."
  • by NinjaNoh ( 968664 ) on Sunday April 15, 2007 @10:40AM (#18741609)
    There may be more women than men online, however they all come in the .jpg format.
  • by Mr. Flibble ( 12943 ) on Sunday April 15, 2007 @10:52AM (#18741693) Homepage
    As a Canadian I am infurated by this article. This was classifed Canadian government information. As such, only Canadians were supposed to know that more women were online - and the fact that more Canadian men were aware of this, as the data shows is no excuse for giving away our secrets!

    Still, the cat is out of the bag. We have large and sparsely populated country. By government mandate we are attempting to increase our populace by going online and luring the ladies to our glacial climate via online dating services!

    This throws a wrench into our grand plan of luring the likes of nubile young women like "cuteie332" "betty22" and "chicky_54" here so we can increase our populace and dominate the earth with our floppy heads!

    --- I need more coffee...
    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by dws90 ( 1063948 )

      Still, the cat is out of the bag.
      Who puts cats in bags, anyway? Cats hate bags.
  • Perhaps they mean more women are featured online on web sites. I would believe that in a second.
  • Simple (Score:4, Funny)

    by cadeon ( 977561 ) on Sunday April 15, 2007 @11:19AM (#18741889)
    Tits or GTFO.
  • by EllynGeek ( 824747 ) on Sunday April 15, 2007 @11:23AM (#18741937)
    Typical sloppy journalism, not specifying the species.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15, 2007 @11:36AM (#18742035)
    ... It's because Americans are a bunch of girls

    Sorry couldn't resist :p
  • by wenchmagnet ( 745079 ) on Sunday April 15, 2007 @11:51AM (#18742143)
    With the typical women who spend most of their time online, they probably outweigh online males too...
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by hellfire ( 86129 )
      With the typical women who spend most of their time online, they probably outweigh online males too...

      Spoken like a true arrogant netgeek lardass male.
  • We all know that at least 69% of those "females" are really 40+ year old guys living in their parent's basement, or 15- year old guys living in their parent's basement.
  • Now take those numbers, and multiply by the amount of time spent online :P (TFA is counting anyone who's touched the internet, at all, in the past month, as "online"...)
  • by Organic Brain Damage ( 863655 ) on Sunday April 15, 2007 @01:49PM (#18743079)
    Women on-line out-number men? Of course...look at any of the pictures, you'll see two, sometimes three or four women in the picutre with just one guy. What? You weren't talking about the pictures? Oh...nevermind.
  • A lot of the psychology forums (lots of them) are young girls - so are the diary sites like Live Journal etc. Young people in general don't always know how to interpret what they are feeling but girls will be more conscious of their emotions and and want to discuss them in diaries and journals. Forums that have "Secrets" groups or threads are always hugely popular (people express a secret thought using photos and captions usually). In the negative, the "pro" eating disorder sites are also 98% girls - and th
  • In related news, women have been found far more likely to take surveys online.
  • by Hepneck ( 876605 ) on Sunday April 15, 2007 @03:18PM (#18743723)
    The article does not explain by what going online means (i.e.- Is it checking email, doing research, shopping, charring, or /.ing?). I am surprised at the number of responses that assume that women are only online to chat or use Facebook. Consider that more women than men earn high school, associates, bachelors, masters, law, medical, and PhD degrees. And while more men than women are still university department chairs, more women tahn men are now the editors of academic journals. Who then is going to naturally be using the web for research (Other than for pictures of Milla Jovovich)? Women are the ones that are beginning to contol the direction of research and ideas. We men should hope that they nice to us, have a good sense of humor, and that they do not hold a grudge for our behavior. _____________________ You may all go to hell, I am going to Texas - Davy Crockett
  • I am not sure that any demographic should be particularly proud of wasting their time on /. and digg.

    I am not.
  • by antdude ( 79039 ) on Sunday April 15, 2007 @05:39PM (#18744775) Homepage Journal
    ... and I am a worker ant that is classified females. [grin]

Whoever dies with the most toys wins.

Working...