Online shops click with silver surfers
A MAJORITY of “silver surfers” now shop online, official figures revealed yesterday.
For the first time, more than half of British adults aged 65 and over (54 per cent) ordered grocery and clothes from stores on the internet this year.
In another blow to the high street, 82 per cent of all consumers bought goods or services online this year, an increase of five per cent on 2018.
The report, compiled by the Office for National Statistics, coincided with new figures from the British Retail Consortium, which show the number of empty shops in town centres has reached its highest level since 2015.
The ONS data detailed household and individual internet use in Britain.
It found about 87 per cent of all adults now use the internet daily or most days.
In 2011, just 20 per cent of those aged 75-plus were internet users but it is now 47 per cent.
The 65 to 74 age group also increased from 52 per cent in 2011 to 83 per cent now. The percentage of older people who have never used the internet has dropped to 29 per cent.
However, the data also showed that of the four million adults who had not used the internet this year, more than half – 2.5 million – were aged 75 and older.
Sending and receiving emails remained the most common online activity among all adults – 86 per cent.
Making video or voice calls over the internet, through services such as Skype or Apple’s FaceTime, has trebled in the past decade, the data showed.
It also revealed 93 per cent of households now have access to the internet – up three per cent on last year and a rise of 23 per cent in the past decade.
Of the seven per cent of homes without internet access, nearly twothirds said they felt they did not need it, and a third cited privacy and security concerns as one of the reasons they did not need access.
In recent years, high-profile data breaches have hit companies, which include Facebook, while internet and social media platforms have come under increased scrutiny over their data-gathering practices and how they protect their users.
The most commonly cited security issue were fraudulent emails and messages (37 per cent) and being redirected to fake websites asking for personal information (24 per cent).
The ONS figures, also found seven per cent of adults had experienced fraudulent credit or debit card use in the past year linked to the internet.