This morning we’ve launched the first ever Digital Anthropology Report – a comprehensive insight into how British people use the internet.
We spoke to over 2,000 people around the country and looked at their attitudes to technology, how they use the internet and other technologies currently, and their plans for buying new gadgets and gizmos in the future.
We then worked with an anthropologist from the University of Kent to analyse the results, draw some conclusions and make a few predictions about how things will develop in the years to come.
What we found was that the UK can be broken into six very different tribes – from "Digital Extroverts" at one end of the spectrum to "Timid Technophobes" at the other.
And based on current trends, we’ve predicted that people’s willingness to embrace digital technology will become increasingly important in determining their economic and social wellbeing in the next decade – more important than traditional markers such as what university they went to or their parents’ economic status. In other words, social networking appears to be replacing social class.
You can read the full report and watch videos of some of our case studies from the different tribes here – and while you’re at it, you might want to look round the rest of our new content hub which has gone live today. We’ve created a fun quiz that will allow you to find out which broadband tribe you fit in.
So why have we done this research?
We pride ourselves on our understanding of our customers’ behaviour and we’re constantly surveying people for their feedback on our services. This time we thought it might be interesting to approach British people as if we were anthropologists studying a new civilisation. If we took a purely objective view about their online behaviour, what would we see? How would we classify them? What quirks would we notice? What trends would we spot? We think the report’s findings bear out this approach and provide fascinating reading.
One of the findings that most surprised me was that nearly a quarter of people are still "Timid Technophobes," despite how the internet has become an integral part of our lives over the past decade. Our research found that Timid Technophobes are likely to have access to the internet and are able to use it, but they simply prefer not to. They are still a little frightened of it. It seems to me that should be a real concern as the internet becomes an increasingly important platform for accessing services from both commercial organisations and government bodies.
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |