The internet gives a new voice to the ‘saga-louts’

THE UK internet audience has increased by an astonishing1.9 million users in the last 12 months – half of whom are aged over 50.

UK web surfers expanded by 5% to 38.8 million in May, compared with 36.9 million in the same month last year, according to UKOM, a division of market research company Nielsen that measures internet usage.

Once regarded as a virtual teenage bedroom, in the days before it was hijacked by commercial concerns, now even social media behemoths like Facebook are feeling the reinvigorated force of online grey power.

That explains why broadband is so slow I guess. I often get virtual road rage when stuck in an internet traffic jam. Now I know who causes it.

My mum.

It’s a trend which has serious implications for the way we communicate with the more senior members of society too.
Alex Burmaster, European internet analyst at UKOM/Neilsen said: “The internet is getting older in more ways than one. Not only is the medium itself maturing but the audience is shifting towards older age groups. The fact that one in four Britons who use the internet today are 50 to 64 years old proves it is no longer the sole preserve of the young.”
Gone are the days when you could dazzle a pensioner by sending a photograph you’d just taken, as if by magic, direct into their home computer.

My personal experiences of internet life will ever be the same. Instead of being irreverent and boisterous I now find much of my online time is spent explaining away compromising old childhood photographs of yours truly, which my mother has dutifully posted on her Facebook page in order to document family history for some relative in Wales she’s not seen since 1969.

Stop it mum. I looked like a particularly pale prune when I was in primary school, and dressing me in tights may have been designed to stop me developing infant pneumonia but I’m 43 now and it’s embarrassing me and your grandchildren.

Oh, the halcyon days of 1 meg broadband – if only things could have stayed that way for longer.
Now my whole online reputation is in the hands of a mischievous Saga-Lout, bent on revenging all my teenage tantrums.

Thanks mum.

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