Images in Media and Stereotypes (Gender)

It is often argued that young people growing up in the presence of Internet and new media are 'techno savvy'. They are assumed to possess new media skills and attitudes which older generations do not. This is assumed to be the main reason for the perceived technological generation gap between the young people and their parents, teachers and other adults. To a certain extent, they have been taken for granted. A complementary study by Livingstone & Helsper (25) show that in the UK, like in other developed countries, there are few children who are not using the Internet and that the previous conception of digital divide between haves and have-nots is no longer applicable to young people. However, they discovered inequalities by age, gender and socioeconomic status in relation to children's Internet use. The group of 12-30 year olds are referred to as the 'Net generation'. In an attempt to explore generational differences, the group of 12-30 year olds where compared to 32-50 year olds (N=672). Non-parametrical tests were used to analyse the generational differences, but also the effect on Internet skills and self-efficacy by age and gender. In previous studies it is shown that Internet skills and self-efficacy vary both by gender and age (Livingstone et. al. 2005). A Kruskal-Wallis test was performed both on Internet skills and self-efficacy. The age was tested for four different age groups (12-20; 21-30; 32-40; 41-50). The results show that gender (Chi2=131.055) and age (Chi2=37.012) are both significant on 99 % confidence level for the differences in internet skills as well as in self-efficacy (gender Chi2=53.863 and age Chi2=57.786). However, within the 'Net generation', the differences are not so big (for internet skills within 'Net-generation' sig=0.057 and self-efficacy sig=0.249), which means that the age could not explain the variation ...