With the advantage of a peculiar wisdom only achieved by experience, we do not always agree with the popular, media-driven, opinions of the rest of the population. This would seem trivial were it not for the fact that with each passing year our numbers increase until we now represent a huge proportion of the population, though our actual representation in governments is negligible to nil.

The Internet, however, has become a two-way channel for senior expression as well as edification. Though often classified as "third agers," pejoratively akin to the now defunct label "third world," the elderly people who use the Internet for both learning and teaching are the fastest developing demographic group on the World Wide Web.

There is a two-way symbiotic benefit between old folks and the Internet . The virtual presence of the older generation adds value to the medium which would not be possible if it were left only to the young. Undergoing change intelligently and gracefully is demonstrated all over the web by old folks who truly feel at home here.

Feeling at ease, comfortable, in other words completely chez nous on the Internet is common to a growing number of elderly netters. New Web sites built and maintained by senior citizens appear on the Internet in a steady stream, and each for a different reason but usually with one thing in common.

The common factor is the independent nature of the medium. There are no rules and regulations; no particular mission to fulfill. Everyone involved uses whatever skills they have at their command and the neophyte is as welcome in Internet society as the experienced technician.

Nobody controls what you put on the Internet, or requires you to take anything off - unless of course you transgress your community's code of morality, in which case somebody will undoubtedly let you know. But there are no cops to call - the Internet is self-governing.

Estimating how many people are online throughout the world is an inexact science at best. Surveys abound, using all sorts of measurement parameters. However, from observing many of the published surveys over the past few years, NUA Internet Surveys have come up with the following educated guess for how many were online worldwide in February 2002. Their estimated world total number was 544.2 million.

This includes everyone on the Internet, children, people in offices, everyone - it would be difficult to discover how many of these are seniors, but the statistics are nevertheless interesting. The NUA Survey geographical breakdown is as follows:

Canada and U.S. 181.23 million
Latin America     25.33 million
Europe     171.35 million
Asia/Pacific     157.49 million
South America     8.79 million
Africa     4.15 million
Middle East     4.65 million
NUA Internet Surveys http://www.nua.ie/surveys/index.cgi

Most of the people on this planet don't have access to the Internet so it is a mistake to imagine that we are all interconnected. What we do know is that every day, every hour, new users are connecting, putting up Web sites, and that more and more of them are in NUA's "Senior Netizens" category.

The Internet industry has recognized the significance of seniors on the net. Two years ago, June 1998, Microsoft set up one of its largest corporate exhibits at a recent American Association of Retired Persons convention, highlighting the computer industry's awakened interest in the elderly. NUA researchers had been warning that marketers who fail to recognise the growing convergence of seniors online were missing out on one of the Net's significant consumer groups.

Statistics regarding old folks on the Internet are hard to pin down, change hourly, and prove nothing, but still it is interesting to read them to note trends. In September, 1997, the most comprehensive survey on Internet users aged 50 and over, carried out by Excite Inc for The Third Age Media Inc, found that 14 percent of all Netizens are described as Third Agers.

A report by the Baruch Collete-Harris Poll (1997) states that 45 percent of Netizens are over the age of 40, and 19 percent are 50 or over. A 1998 survey by BC-Harris found that 8 percent of adults aged 65 and over were online, and that that this group represented 3 percent of the total adult online population. Results from Activmedia's March, 1998 survey show that senior citizens are one of the fastest-growing segments of the online population. Their survey also revealed that "Older Netizens" believed that the World Wide Web improves relationships.

An NUA survey in August, 1998 declares that Internet users over the age of 55 are highly educated, affluent and have a higher tendency to purchase online than younger surfers. This revelation could account for the significant value of senior Web sites. According to an October, 1998 study conducted by SeniorNet and Charles Schwab Inc. over 13 million US adults over the age of 50 have Internet access and this number is growing rapidly As to online shopping, a new survey in September, 1999, by Greenfield Online has found that 92 percent of US seniors with Internet access have window-shopped online, while 78 percent have made an online purchase.

Seniors who maintain their own Web sites provide various valuable functions. Volunteering their skills, talents, time and online fees, some elderly netters are putting up sites for non-profit organizations, churches, lodges, and other useful endeavours. Also, most elderly netters are comfortable with their age. Only a few resent being part of the senior generation and hate the word "old" as though aging were avoidable, reversable, or a crime.

Others use their web pages to describe their own particular travels and adventures. Still others have web pages containing stories, poems, jokes and interesting anecdotes around their own special interests.

When a member of the 60+ chat group discovered her cancer was incurable, she opened up a Web site where she wrote regular accounts of how she and her family were coping. Her daily journal was actually uplifting. Her spirit right up to the end was an inspiration to her friends and to strangers who happened upon her Web site. Her reactions to the medical interventions and the decisions she made about them were of interest to doctors whose attention was drawn to that powerful Web site.

Another popular type of web page is the HomePage variety which tells everything about the person, his or her spouse, children, grandchildren, family pictures, including the dog, and often also hand drawings right off the fridge door, by some of their grandchildren.

The variety of non-commercial web pages being maintained on the Internet has by now become endless, and every one of them increases the value of the World Wide Web.

One difference between these seniors' HomePages and those of the younger members of the Internet world is that a person who has been around for three quarters of a century has more to say than the twenty-something netter. And there are other major differences.

Most seniors on the Internet are not trying to sell anything. Their Web sites are not intrusive, in that they do not seem to be trying to persuade the reader to do, think, or buy anything.

Senior-netters are not bound by rules or regulations. They belong, individually, to all sorts of boards and organizations but these affiliations do not control their web activities. The freedom of the Internet, akin to freedom of speech and freedom of the press, has no national borders, the Internet community bringing like-minded people together unfettered.

The old folks we find to be most at home on the Internet are also at ease with one another, based on the common experiences of this group which puts them in the category of having lived in "several worlds in one lifetime!"

The development of computer mediated communication expands our horizons, providing our generation, even those who are house-bound, with a means of taking part in a world-wide, borderless community. Telephones let us talk with our friends and neighbours. With print, radio and television we read about, listen to and watch, the world. With the Internet we can participate. Though the Internet society is an extremely small portion of the population, other media feed off the Internet so it has become a primary source of news and information.

There are hundreds of Web sites, mostly commercial, "aimed at" seniors, and there are as many more sites "about" seniors, but the most fascinating are the ones we build ourselves, for eachother, and for the betterment of the Internet in general. They add a needed dimension.

We find the information we need by surfing the web. . meet like-minded friends in chat rooms. . visit distant lands. . find lost relatives. . study, investigate, and play games. . Some of us are frail. . . confined to wheelchairs, or bed. . but we still "get around" with our 'puters. . And, as well as all we gain from the web, we also provide.

There are people of all ages, including seniors, who dislike, mistrust and refuse to adapt to innovation. They avoid a lot of personal frustration. For others, adapting to change has been their way for a lifetime and they know that there's much more to come.