The Oxford Internet Institute has recently published the latest Internet Surveys for 2007.
The surveys aim to give a picture of Internet usage in the UK. The statistics reveal the different users' profiles, which are the most popular online activities, who is digitally excluded from the online world and why exclusion still occurs.

What follows is a summary of the findings I found more interesting, as I skimmed through the 87 pages report.

The typical user is still the same as the previous surveys, that is, male, student with a high level of education, enabled, from the highest income (>£50,000) background. However, gender and income are becoming less determining.

Trust on the reliability of the information on the Internet remained steady between 2005 and 2007, but it slightly decreased in comparison with 2000.

Among newspapers, television and the Internet, the Internet is the most trusted media by users, followed closely by television. The viceversa is true for non-users, while newspapers are the least trusted media for both groups.

Spam and junk-mails are the least tolerated activities, especially for people in employment. Employed people are also the users who are more likely to take action against these activities.
Both users and non-users increasingly feel that society is hard to understand, but for non-users this feeling is much more prominent.

The most popular place where Internet gets used is by far the home, followed by the office. Internet cafés are the least popular.

In comparison with 2005, less people feel that loosing access to Internet would be a problem.
Between 2005 and 2007 emails, chat rooms and phone calls over the internet are more widely used, but blogging decreased.

Not even 20% of internet users has a profile in social networks and the large majority are students, with males outnumbering females.

Retired people are most likely to meet in person someone met online, while students are the least likely to do so.

Individuals increasingly feel that their online social networks influence their offline networks, although this influence is very weak and it is restricted to the circle of friends and family.
They do not believe that Internet use has an impact on other social activities or on their use of other media.

People increasingly see that Internet's main purpose is to help them to keep in contact with the others.

In 2005 having a personal website was as popular as putting pictures online, while in 2007 the latter largely outnumbered the former.
Video downloading also outnumbered Music downloading, as an increasing number of users listen to music online.

The civic partecipation of users online is still well below their participation offline.


References
Dutton, H. W. and Helsper, J. Ellen (2007) ' The Internet in Britain 2007 ', accessed by 2-08-2007.
url: http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/research/oxis/OxIS2007_Report.pdf