The Internet Users Among Elderly Filipinos

In an article in on this blog entitled “Knowing The Internet Usage Of Café Customers” that referred to Yahoo Nielsen Internet Habits Study for the Philippines, it was revealed that only three (3%) of my generation (50+ years old) are using the Internet. The small percentage is understandable because most of us did not have computer subjects during our student days.

The above, however, does not mean that the computer literate members of my generation are less knowledgeable on the technology than the generations younger than us. I should say that the 3% or so among us are rather lucky to have engaged ourselves in the use of computers especially to access the Internet. We are the age group in the survey with the lowest percentage of users no but we know that we will grow in the coming years.

I can only speak of myself because I have not done a personal survey of what we, the half-centenarians and above, are doing when we get online. Included in the survey of Yahoo-Nielsen are the different activities that Filipinos do when they get into the Internet and the following are possibly what most of the members of my generation do online:

* Use e-mail and instant messaging and send Internet SMS (text messages)
* Work on personal blog, read news online and blogs of others.
* Visit social networking sites and public forums.
* Do online banking and purchase products online.

Needless to say, I also use the personal computer in writing my communications (word processing), doing calculations and analysis (electronic spreadsheet) and making presentations. I wish to add that the computer literates in our generation are very lucky to have witnessed and/or used the different models of computers from TRS Radio Shack, Commodore, IBM 8086, 286, 486, Pentium I, II, 3, 4 up to the current multi-core processors.

If you are a member of my generation (50+ years old), what do you do when use a personal computer and/or when you go online?