The latest internet usage statistics have been published for up to June 2012.
(Aside: the Office for National Statistics really should be congratulated for publishing such useful stats and breakdowns each quarter.)
Overall, they show the total number of people using the internet is increasing: it’s 4% more than to March this year and 10% higher than this time last year. This is great news, and testament to the great work organisations like Go On UK are doing.
The focus on who isn’t using the internet tends to be on older people. Though understandable, my focus is always on disabled people, and the figures show why:
- To June 2012, there were 3.91 million disabled adults who had never used the internet
- This 3.91m disabled adults represents around 34% of all disabled adults, i.e. 1 in 3 disabled adults has never used the internet
- The equivalent figure for non-disabled people is around 10%, i.e. 1 in 10 non-disabled adults has never used the internet
- Thus, disabled people are three times more likely never to have used the internet than non-disabled people
- The 3.91m disabled adults who have never used the internet represents just under half of the 7.82m adults who had never used the internet, i.e. nearly 1 in 2 of all people who have never used the internet are disabled people.
By way of comparison: 38% of adults aged 65 years and over had never used the Internet, representing 2.12m people, i.e. 2 in 5.
Thus, in relative terms, older people and disabled people’s use of the internet is about the same (38% to 34% respectively). In absolute terms, there are around 1.8m more disabled people who have never used the internet than people over 65.
Useful to keep in mind, especially if we’re moving towards Digital by Default and online information directories in social care…
arbitrary constant 