In the "Oh, Please" Category

My attention was just called to this article.

It basically says that more girls and young women use the Internet than boys do. On the face of it, that's interesting, but not surprising. Granted, I interact with more women than men, and most of them are working in an industry that requires Internet proficiency.

But the article states that "New research suggests it is time to rethink the stereotypical net user as a pasty-faced male geek in Joe 90 specs, or the furtive spotty teen looking for zeppelin breasts online."

Hel-LLO! When did we establish that stereotype, 1980? I was using the Internet in 1992 to get information for my Cleveland Browns Backers newsletter. I'm no supermodel, but I've never been pasty-faced, and I've always used the Internet more than the men in my life.

But I've also been an aberration in most generalities, so okay, let's assume they're right that the Internet "began as an almost exclusively male preserve."

The article gets worse. It focuses most of its statistics on social networking, at least in the first half of the article, and says “Girls use the internet for gossiping and finding things out about friends and people you know. Boys use it more for useful things like games."

Oh. My. God.

First, when was playing games ever a better, more constructive thing than personal interaction?

Second, I'm pretty sure there is a lot of research and other kinds of activity going on, so the focus is bogus.

The article states that YouTube users are primarily men. I have no idea how they think they know that. They don't cite a source, just quote a couple of users. Perhaps YouTube accounts require that info, but how do they know it's true?

Some of the other stuff, later in the article, about women not enrolling in IT education programs, etc., is more substantial and harder to argue, but that's a very different subject. And making money via programming is a lot different from making money via usage, so saying women are gossiping but not making money is completely wrong.

One of the commenters to the article said (paraphrasing and inferring) "who cares about social networking, all the users are in peer-to-peer sharing, and that's all males." I don't think it's any better to indicate that boys mostly do illegal stuff on the 'net than it is to say girls mostly gossip.

My initial righteous indignation is wearing off and my argument is starting to get wispy, so I'm going to stop here.

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