The Number of UK Adults to Have NEVER Gone Online Drops to 5.9 Million

The 2015 Internet Users report from the Government’s Office for National Statistics has reported that 86% of adults (44.7 million) in the United Kingdom had used the internet, in the last 3 months, by the end of March 2015. But issues like disability and old age meant that 11% of adults (5.9m) had never gone online (down from 6.4m one year ago).

Age is a key factor here and unsurprisingly adults aged 16 to 24 years were said to have “consistently shown the highest rates of internet use” (i.e. 99% have been online in the past 3 months), which falls slightly to 95% for those aged 35-54, then to 87% for 55-64, 71% for users aged 65-74 and finally this collapses to just 33% for adults aged 75+. Out of the 5.9 million adults who had never used the internet, some 3.0 million were aged 75+.

Similarly disability remains one of the single biggest problem areas and the ONS states that 27% of disabled adults (3.3 million) had never used the internet (down from 3.5m one year ago), although it’s important to note that some of those aged 75+ who have never gone online would also be classified as disabled.

The report also touched on the gender divide, although the figures are quite close with 88% of men (22.2 million) and 85% of women (22.4 million) being classified as recent Internet users. Otherwise there’s not a lot to report and it appears as if the ONS has removed its old category for measuring the impact of income on Internet use.

2015 Internet Users Report (PDF)
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_404497.pdf