The internet is neither age friendly or unfriendly. It just is. If older people motivated themselves to learn something new, there would be no need to write articles like this.

The world is turning and those who help themselves, do best. A far more hard hitting article would be marrying age and online ignorance with the pending fiscal gap.

"[Becoming] confident and competent internet users" is a human right?

What a load of utter tosh.

Any intelligent person, of any age, can master the basics in fifteen minutes, and can learn the rest simply from exposure to the medium. It is not difficult, and it is an insult to the older folk to suggest that it is. Only SIFs and rent-seekers would think otherwise.

I am older but not ancient. I do ,just, fall into the mentioned age category.

I use the Internet extensively as does my wife and the vast bulk of her friends . We live in country Tasmania , nowadays , but previously in Brisbane.

Certainly some of our friends don't use the net as in Emails.. forget Tweeting and Facebook, our generation thinks that those two are rubbish !

The ones who avoid the Net use Telephones, read Newspapers or drop in on friends either by arrangement or not. At the end of the day they are all forms of communication and acquisition of knowledge

My experience shows that the vast bulk of people aged around 70 regularly use the Net. Over that , frankly they aren't greatly interested AND.... wait for it... They believe that they can live without it ! It’s all about choice

Choice is a strong belief in Baby Boomers

I agree Pericles.

My mother learnt the internet basics at work at 65 years old.
Then she proceeded to teach the others at work, and her children.

She was the first in our family to purchase a home computer.
Now, at 83 years old, she is still going strong on her computer!

this internet age is just in transition to something else, maybe telepathy?
I learned touch typing at age 24, got to 55wpm, and have hardly used it any more, back to the Columbus method.
I learned to use a slide rule at age 28 working as an observer for the weather bureau, but where can you find a slide rule these days, pray tell?
Don't tell me the internet is going to make my life better, easier and fuller: there are enough scammers, hucksters and standover merchants online and I have enough on my plate keeping them off the line.

Just to clarify, the reference I made to SIFs earlier on was to Single Issue Fanatics - that is, people who see everything in the light of their own personal obsession.

>>Only SIFs and rent-seekers would think otherwise.<<

Apologies to anyone who thought I meant Secret Internet Fatties.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=sif

Who knew?

[Pericles, your comment made sense in that Secret Internet Fatties would think internet access was one of their necessary human rights.]

"What of those among us who have not had any real imperative to start to move our lives online?"

There's your answer... until they HAVE a real imperative, there is no problem to be fixed.

"Yet it is easy to forget that not everyone has been included in this revolution... Today, our world is rapidly shifting to cyberspace. Most services are available online... All this is very exciting, bringing a new digital information age of convenience..."

Speaking of convenience, in 'our world' 2.5 billion people do not even have "a safe, clean and private toilet".

A fact I found out about on World Toilet Day (19 Nov) via the internet. The site quotes Mahatma Gandhi (1925) “Sanitation is more important than independence.” Which is no surprise from someone who famously wore a nappie.

Perversely, their website invites tweets at #wecantwait, so I cannot work out if the people who 'cant wait' but can tweet have their priorities right since they would be the ones without the toilets but with the internet.

So if we are inventing human rights I'm unsure which ones should be more important.

I do not know about access to the WWW and all that modern connectivity being a right: its just that things would be so much more inconvenient without it!

For somebody with no exposure to the internet and its basic hardware the problems will be daunting. Yes, its so easy to say buy a wireless modem and connect your IPAD. But so much has been left unsaid. Perhaps education and affirmative action in setting up the internet for those who have been overcome by these events would be a good thing.

Fully support this article. Thank you Susan.

I find it pathetic that those who struggle with concepts wholly foreign to them, not to mention feeling exposed to the very real scams, viruses etc, are deemed to be unmotivated or unintelligent if they're not confident with computers. Personally I know plenty of intelligent, hardworking people who struggle with computers. It's not difficult to see their intelligence is focused elsewhere, often to loftier purposes that benefit us all, eg caring for others.

It's easy for me (and many others). I have worked decades in an office so computers are part of my daily life – ALL DAY. But on occasion teaching older and not so older generations the 'basics', I often find it takes us both patience to find ways to teach/comprehend new concepts - it's often not basic at all.

Of those teaching themselves as novices, many have related skills, or adapt to it with some natural skill but many don't have the background or skills that might allow them to obtain sufficient competency and confidence on their own. Frankly, knowing what I know now, an average person has a lot to be wary of if they've never used computers.

Even those who "choose" not to get involved with computers must accept substantial consequences and reduced access that was previously available - OK for some, isolating for a majority, critical for others.

If the world again changes in such a revolutionary way, the way it has with computers, at a later point in my life, I hope there will be more understanding for me if my life skills, built over my life, are substantially diminished by the requirement for a completely new set of skills to keep up with the world and get support just when I need it most.