If your mother can send you lolcats, you are part of a trend.
Being a parent means that using the Internet is practically a requirement, and according to three separate studies about 86% to 87% of
parents are now online.
A Pew Internet & American Life Project survey conducted in late 2006 found that 87% of all parents use the Internet.
More recently, the US Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information
Administration came to a nearly identical conclusion. In October 2007, it found that 86.5% of households consisting of a married couple with children under
the age of 18 had Internet access either at home or in some other location.
In family households without children, the Internet access
rate was just 73.1%. Among non-family households, only 58.5% had Internet access.
Experian Consumer Research found in its spring 2007 consumer survey
that 86% of women who had at least one child in their household went
online. Moreover, the Internet usage rate rose to 94% among women who
expected to have their first or second child in the next year.
Two other researchers provide estimates for the number of moms online. According to Nielsen Online @Plan, there were 32.4 million women online with children under 18 in their household as of winter 2007/2008, making up 22.6% of all adult Internet users.
comScore Media Metrix, measuring a slightly different population, estimated that in December 2007 there were 30.1 million women online who were between the ages of 25 and 54 and had one or more children at home. These women made up 16.4% of all US Internet users during that month.
Mothers represent 43.7% of all adult females who go online.
Mothers are part of an adult female Internet user population that will grow from 80.9 million in 2008 to 91.3 million in 2012. Adult females outnumber adult males in both the general population and the Internet user population.
Learn more about what mom is doing on the Internet. Read eMarketer's Moms Online: Browsing, Researching, Buying report.