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The Daily. Monday, March 26, 2001
Cycle 14 of the General Social Survey, conducted during 2000, estimated that 13 million Canadians, or 53% of those aged 15 and over, used the Internet at home, at work or at some other location in the 12 months prior to the survey. This was three times the 1994 rate of 18%. Although 11.6 million people aged 15 and older were not using the Internet in 2000, about 27% of them expressed interest in doing so.
The GSS found that people who use the Internet tend to be younger, and to have higher incomes and more education than those who don't. Men use the Internet more than women. In addition, francophones were less likely to use the Internet than anglophones, while people living in rural Canada were less likely than urban dwellers to go on-line.
About three-quarters of the population felt that access to the Internet should be universal. However, people differed on who should be responsible for removing the barriers. Of those who had an opinion, about 45% felt the responsibility belonged to individuals themselves, while 42% felt that the federal government should remove the barriers. About 37% indicated that private industry such as Internet service providers should be responsible. Just under one-quarter (23%) said they didn't know who should be responsible for eliminating barriers.
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Of non-users whose household incomes were less than $20,000, 42% reported cost as a barrier to Internet use. At the other end of the scale, close to one-third of non-users earning more than $80,000 said they didn't have time to use the Internet.
Non-users were more likely than users to say that the federal government should be responsible for removing barriers, and they were less likely to say individuals themselves are responsible.
Nine out of every 10 teenagers aged 15 to 19 reported using the Internet at some time in the 12 months prior to the survey, the highest proportion of any age group.
Internet use declined steadily for each subsequent age group. About 70% of individuals aged 25 to 29 used the Internet, compared with 61% of those aged 35 to 39, and only 13% of seniors aged 65 and over. This pattern has changed since 1994, when Internet use was lower among teens (12%), and ranged between 16% to 23% for age groups up to age 59. In 1994, few people aged 60 and over used the Internet.
Men were more likely to use the Internet than women in every age group. However, women have closed the gap substantially since 1994. About 22% of men used the Internet in 1994, compared with 14% of women. By 2000, the proportion of men surfing the net had more than doubled to 56%, while the proportion of women had more than tripled to 50%.
Individuals with university education were much more likely to use the Internet than those with less than a high school diploma. Among individuals 20 or older, 13% of those with less than a high school diploma used the Internet, compared with 79% with university education.
Internet use also increases with income. Only 30% of individuals in households with income less than $20,000 had used the Internet, compared with 81% of individuals in households with an annual income of $80,000.
The impact of income on Internet use increased with age. For example, among 15- to 24-year-olds, Internet use increased from 77% of those with less than $20,000 household income to 94% of those with household income more than $100,000. In contrast, in the age group 55 to 64, Internet use increased from 8% of those with less than $20,000 household income to 77% of those with more than $100,000 income. Internet use among seniors showed similar trends; use was lowest in low-income households and highest in households with higher incomes.
Internet use was highest in Alberta and British Columbia, at about 61% of the population. Between 44% and 48% used the Internet in Newfoundland, New Brunswick, Quebec, Manitoba and Prince Edward Island.
About 55% of urban residents used the Internet, compared with 45% of their rural counterparts. The urban-rural divide in Internet use also was seen in each province.
Some Internet users were concerned about privacy and security issues in relation to making purchases or banking over the Internet, while francophones - those who most often speak French at home - saw language as a barrier.
An estimated 3.1 million people, about one-quarter of all Canadians who surf the Internet, have used it to buy goods and services. About 28% of men and 19% of women who used the Internet reported they had purchased something on-line during the 12 months prior to the survey, even though the majority had used it only for "window shopping" - searching for information on products and services. In Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta, about 26% of users used it to buy something.
Similarly, just under 3 million people, 23% of users, used it for electronic banking, which was most common in Ontario, Nova Scotia, Alberta, Quebec and British Columbia. "E-banking" increased with income, from 15% of users with household incomes of less than $30,000 to 34% of those with with household incomes of $80,000 or more.
E-banking and on-line purchasing were most common among adults in their late 20s and 30s. About 31% of Internet users aged 30 to 39 used the Internet for e-banking, a higher percentage than younger or older age groups. Similarly, 28% of Internet users aged 25 to 39 used the Internet to purchase goods and services, also higher than other age groups. E-banking and on-line purchasing were least common among users aged 15 to 24 (11% and 17%, respectively).
When it came to making on-line purchases, or to e-banking, 72% of users reported that they were concerned about security. Further, concerns about privacy and security appear to be a significant factor in the use of the Internet to buy products and services. Indeed, only 17% of those greatly concerned made purchases, whereas 32% of those with little or no concern bought goods and services on the Internet. Slightly more women than men were concerned about security issues. Younger users expressed less concern about privacy and security, but were also much less likely to bank on-line.
Security concerns influenced purchases and banking on the Internet
| Percentage of users who made purchases or banked | ||
|---|---|---|
| Purchase | Banking | |
| Security concerns | ||
| Greatly concerned | 17 | 15 |
| Somewhat concerned | 29 | 29 |
| Hardly concerned | 39 | 35 |
| Not at all concerned | 29 | 28 |
| No opinion | 8(1) | 8(1) |
| 1 | These figures should be used with caution. The coefficient of variation of the estimate is between 16.6% and 33.3%. |
About 5% of users, or 750,000 people, reported having actually experienced some security problem on the Internet, such as having people hack into their e-mail account or computer files, receiving viruses, receiving threatening e-mail messages, having their personal information made public, or encountering credit card problems.
Sixty-six percent of users reported specific concerns about privacy, for example, that their e-mail could be accessed, or that someone would discover the Web sites they had visited.
About 2.3 million francophones, who represented 18% of all users, reported that they used the Internet in the 12 months prior to the survey. About 44% of francophones used the Internet in 2000, compared with 58% of anglophones.
Almost 4 in 10 francophones felt there was not enough Internet content in French. The availability of content in English was a negligible issue among anglophones.
More than one-half of households with children aged 5 to 18 at home have purchased a computer specifically for their children. Thirty-three percent of parents with home Internet access reported that they do nothing to monitor its use by their children. In the two-thirds of households where a child's Internet use was monitored, the most common method was informal parental supervision.
Methods such as locking the computer, using monitoring software, or using an Internet provider that filters out unacceptable Web sites were all used by less than 10% of households with Internet connections.
About 84% of Internet users connect to e-mail, and many use it daily. Just over 4 million e-mail users, about 39% of the total, reported that they used e-mail every day in the past month, and another 25% said they used it at least several times a week.
Internet users who were born outside Canada were somewhat more likely to use e-mail every day than those born in Canada. About 44% of those born outside Canada used it daily, compared with 38% of people born in Canada.
The Internet has become a regular tool of communication for most of its users; about two-thirds of them send and receive e-mail several times a week. Moreover, e-mail has helped extend lines of communication beyond national boundaries. Asked about their e-mail correspondence with people outside Canada, 43% of Canadian-born Internet users indicated that they used e-mail to communicate internationally in the last month. Not surprisingly, foreign-born Canadians were even more likely to have had international e-mail correspondence. About 71% had used e-mail to correspond with people outside the country.
Among users an estimated 79% of men and 70% of women searched the Internet for information on goods and services, by far the most popular activity reported after e-mailing. Teens aged 15 to 19 and seniors were less likely than others to use the Internet for this reason.
The next most popular use was to access a news site; 55% of users reported doing so. Men were more likely to surf for news than women. Teens were less likely to access a news site than were all other age groups.
Women, however, were more likely than men to search for health and medical information - 52% compared with 41%. About 40% of Internet users, or 5.3 million individuals, said they had accessed information on government programs on the Internet.
As Canadians spend more time on the Internet, they devote less time to other activities. More than one-quarter of users reported that because of their Internet use they watched less television, and 15% spent less time reading books, magazines and newspapers. About 10% reported that they devoted less time to sleeping, leisure activities and household chores.
The document Changing our ways: Why and how Canadians use the Internet (56F0006XIE) as well as a set of tables (56-505-XIE) are now available free on Statistics Canada's Web site (www.statcan.ca). To download the document, go to the Products and services page and choose Research papers (free), then Social conditions. To download the tables and a summary, go to the Products and services page and choose Free publications, then Social conditions.
For more information, or to enquire about the concepts, methods or data quality of this release, contact Heather Dryburgh (613-951-6276), or Kathryn Stevenson (613-951-4178), Housing, Family and Social Statistics Division.