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Wednesday, 22 November, 2000, 15:12 GMT
Australia's net-savvy young
Child's hand on a mouse
Girls were as likely to be computer-literate
A new generation in Australia are growing up as "natural-born net babes" - as the Sydney Morning Herald put it.

A survey released on Tuesday has shown that 95% of Australian youngsters, aged five to 14 years, have used a computer in the last year.

That figure was far higher than that for adults: only 66% of Australians adults used a computer in the same period.

The findings, by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), also show that almost half (47%) of all children surveyed had used the internet in the last year.

That is almost the same level of use as adults. The survey showed 48% or 6.6 million adults had surfed the web.

Connected households

The young use computers for both fun and work - for games, school work, e-mail, chat rooms and surfing the net - the survey showed.


Children were more likely to use computers at school than at home
The ABS survey, conducted in August, showed that over half of all Australian households - 53% or 3.7 million homes - had access to a computer at home.

Households that had access to the internet stood at 2.4 million - about a third of all Australian households.

That figure is a considerable jump since a survey last year, when only a quarter of households had home access to the internet.

No sex gap for young

Older children were more likely to have used a computer or accessed the net, but the sex of the child made little difference.

With adults, however, men were slightly more likely than women to use a computer or the internet.

The survey also found children from more educated and higher-income homes in urban areas were more likely to be net-literate.

The use of computers at school was higher than home use for all children.

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See also:

20 Jul 00 | Asia-Pacific
Web activists target Olympics
08 Sep 00 | Business
UK set for internet growth
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