Britons aged 75 and over using internet nearly double in seven years

The proportion of people aged 75 and over using the internet has nearly doubled in the last seven years in the UK. Figures compiled by the Office of National Statistics show that while there has been little change in internet use for adults aged 16 to 44, the number of older people going online has shot up from 29% in 2013 to 54% in 2020. The information is based on figures from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) between January and March 2020 so it will not include changes due to the pandemic. However, it is expected that coronavirus has further increased internet use among older people as a lot of services moved online amid social distancing. The ONS findings showed that more people than ever recently used the internet with an increase in use among all adults of 92% in 2020, up from 91% in 2019. Almost all adults aged 16 to 44 in the UK were recent internet users (99%), compared with 54% of adults aged 75 years and over. The proportion of people who had never used the internet stood at 6.3% of adults in 2020, down from 7.5% in 2019.