Skip to Content

Are Girls Getting More Tech Savvy?

A new report says that young women use more technology at home than their male counterparts.
January 22, 2009

A new report says that girls now use more technology at the home than boys do. Coauthors Karen Pine, a professor at the University of Hertfordshire, in the U.K., and Robert Hart, of U.K.-based educational consultants Intuitive Media, also claim that mothers are more likely to lend a helping hand than fathers when these technologies fail.

Uh … really? I find this pretty surprising. The number of electronic gadgets and gizmos piled up in my brothers’ room always far outweighed the number in mine. Besides the Sega Game Gear that I wore thin playing Sonic, most of the new technologies in our household belonged to them. I could kick some serious butt at Mario Cart, but only on my brother’s Nintendo 64. And when the electronics malfunctioned, it was Dad, not Mom, we called upon.

In this press release, Pine says that “overall, mothers are more likely to engage with their children using new technologies, especially when it comes to formal learning or research. The mothers were also the most experienced and capable computer and Internet users.” This may be true for some households, but it definitely wasn’t in mine.

Given that technology fields like engineering and IT are dominated by males, not females, it would seem natural that this starts at home–contrary to the study results. Then again, over the past few years, there has been a “call to action” to increase the number of women in IT, especially given the news that the number is actually decreasing.

Tellingly, the report, called “Learning in the Family,” only takes into account PCs and laptops–not gaming systems and other gadgets. The percentages also seem quite close: 94 percent of girls compared with 88 percent of boys said that they used a computer or laptop at home.

The report was launched today by Intuitive Media Research Services, which commissioned the report. It was funded by the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta).

I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts on the state of women in technology, and whether you think the trend will be an increase or a decrease in women in the field.

Keep Reading

Most Popular

Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.

And that's a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models.

OpenAI teases an amazing new generative video model called Sora

The firm is sharing Sora with a small group of safety testers but the rest of us will have to wait to learn more.

Google’s Gemini is now in everything. Here’s how you can try it out.

Gmail, Docs, and more will now come with Gemini baked in. But Europeans will have to wait before they can download the app.

This baby with a head camera helped teach an AI how kids learn language

A neural network trained on the experiences of a single young child managed to learn one of the core components of language: how to match words to the objects they represent.

Stay connected

Illustration by Rose Wong

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

Explore more newsletters

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service@technologyreview.com with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.