Digital Living: Gender and the Internet

Name: Jahangir Syed

Sociology 1301

Class: 8 AM

Assignment #5

November 12th

Digital Living: Gender and the internet

Considering that not many interactive sites existed and those ones that existed were text-only environment, and the most prominent early sites were called “multi-user dungeons” (online version of a board game), it is obvious that the early internet attracted mostly male users with an interest in technology. Another factor shaping the user base was that internet attracted many people who were looking for an alternative space where they could meet with like-minded people who were not necessarily present in their offline lives. Many early theorists thought the use of a free character in the online world would erode “gender” in the cyberspace; however, as the internet expanded and became more accessible to everyone, it attracted equal number of women and people not interested in technology but with shopping or socializing, giving rise to sites like Facebook which requires people to use their own names - making gender more prominent. Women and men tend to replicate certain offline gender patterns online, such as women interacting with close friends while males search for other people, and they both portray themselves differently online. Cyberspace does not completely free us from gender after all, and life on the screen looks somewhat like life off the screen.

It wasn’t surprising that the early predictions about the likely users of internet were proven wrong as technology has always been a creation that could not be predicted about. Sure, the change in technology can be predicted for a month or two but never for a year, decade, or a century. Social factors such as computers making shopping and work easier online attracted women. It is also a great tool to interact with others, and for women doing most of the work for kinship and socializing, it is the perfect medium and women are the prominent users of social networking sites. The migration of...