Applications and Patterns of Use
Despite the gender parity in internet access, Pew reports revealed differences in the various Web activities of men and women. The most popular use of the internet for women was e-mail, which was used to keep up with distant family and friends and served as an "isolation antidote." Popular Web activities for women included looking for health or medical information, checking out job information, playing games online, and hunting for religious or spiritual information. Men, on the other hand, listed as their favorite Web activities looking for news and financial information online, selling and buying stocks online, looking for information about products or services, participating in online auctions, looking for information about hobbies or interests, seeking political information, and checking sports information.
Both men and women use the internet as a tool for sociability. Men are drawn to online groups whose subject matter is politics, sports, or professional activities, whereas women are drawn to online groups whose subject matter is health information (e.g., medical support groups), local community associations that are online, or entertainment sites.
More women than men use e-mail on a daily basis (19% vs. 5%). More than half of women (57%) find e-mail to be a useful way in which to keep in touch with family, compared with 44% of men (Tracking Online Life, 2000). More than half of African American women (56%) say that using e-mail has helped them to strengthen intrafamily connections and 37% say that e-mail has strengthened family connections, compared with 43% and 20% of African American men, respectively. Nearly two of three women (65%) say that they use e-mail to keep in touch with family and friends because it is efficient, compared with 59% of men. More than half of women (53%) use e-mail to reach out to geographically dispersed relatives, compared with 43% of men. And more women than men are apt to use e-mail to communicate a variety of messages. Women are more likely to go online from home rather than from work, and they spend more time online than do men (33% vs. 25%).
Pew reports revealed differences in how ethnic groups use the internet for entertainment and leisure activities. For instance, Asian American women are big consumers and users of financial information, with nearly half of them (44%) accessing this information at least one time, including 15% accessing it on a regular basis. Approximately 16% of Asian American women have sold stock, and 4% have done so on a typical day. This is twice the rate for Hispanic American women and four times the rate for white and African American women.
Pew reports also revealed differences in how men and women seek news as well as government and civic information. Two thirds of men (66%) have received news online, compared with 53% of women. This rate increases as socioeconomic factors are increased. More Asian American men (72%) have gone online for news than have other men, with 42% going online on a typical day, compared with only 24% of Asian American women.
However, more women than men seek out health-related information on the internet, particularly information related to a specific illness, material related to symptoms, or after visiting a doctor (63% vs. 46%). Two thirds of women between 30 and 49 years of age have gone online for health-related information. Women are twice as likely as men to look for material related to the health needs of their children (16% vs. 7%), but both men and women seek out health information related to parents or other relatives. Women are more concerned than men about the reliability of the health information they find online. More women than men are "very concerned" that Web sites will give out personal information about the women (73% vs. 65%). Men are slightly more privacy conscious in that they tend to read the privacy policies of Web sites more often than do women. Because of the anonymous nature of the Web, more men than women search for sensitive information online.