Internet Use Grows to 69 Percent of US Adults

NickABusey writes "According to Harris Interactive, more than two-thirds, or 69 percent of American adults were internet users last year. This is up from only 56 percent in 1999 and a measley 9 percent in 1995. Perhaps more noteworthy is the increase in users with high-speed Internet connections. In 2001 is was 22 percent, now it is up to 37 percent."

Comments

In Other News . . .

[Corbie]

Percent of useful content on the internet continues to drop.

Re:Sounds good, right? Here's the problem...

[ackthpt]

Most of these people probably do not use the Internet for something truly worthwhile. By that I claim that instead of doing research or reading various news sources to gain an unbiased perspective on the world around us, people mostly are just forwarding silly emails, chatting mindlessly with their peers, searching for pornography, and downloading crappy quality pirated music files.

Or reading and posting on slashdot, but yeah, I see your point.

Here's a point for you to consider: who judges what use is use rather than just fiddling around?

The other interesting bit is how much of this 'use' happens at work...

Re:Sounds good, right? Here's the problem...

[Ranger96]

I think it's rather naive to say you get your news from NY Times, AP, Slashdot, etc. rather than biased sources like Fox. ALL news sources of some degree of bias. If you think a news source is un-biased, that just means you agree with whatever bias they demonstrate.

I find it helpful to get news from a variety of sources of all types. The most interesting comparison to me is to see what stories are not covered by a news outlet.

Ranger96

Re:Sounds good, right? Here's the problem...

[glinden]

It's a bit of a pain to get news from a wide variety of sources though. Takes quite a bit of time. I've found a couple resources to be useful for this.

Google News and Technorati pick from a wide variety of sources and allow you to search news articles. But I sometimes find it hard to find what I want in all the clutter. Plastic provides moderation and discussion of news, but doesn't have broad coverage. Various RSS aggregators allow me to create your own news feed, but they don't have good coverage of mainstream news sources and they're a bit of a pain to set up. There's a couple recent attempts at personalized news -- Findory News is one -- that try to pull news from a broad variety of sources targetted to your interests.

What do you use?

Wooo

[Remlik]

Yea go USA! My father in law is one of those 69%...just this weekend I spent about two hours removing 12 viruses/trojans and another 6 or so spyware programs from his computer. All gotten from some evil pr0n sites (well he is divorced and single..).

Last month I installed a firewall and updated his anti-virus. I asked him why he had them both disabled, he said "My favorite web site requires me to have these turned off at all times."

With my wife (his daughter) in the room I didn't really say anything, but before we left I explained to him in private that his favorite web site has been installing viruses and spyware on his PC...then I gave him a few tips on how to find reputable pr0n.

I hope next year 99% of all US citizens are online, I'm going to be starting up a zombie network to punish evil terrorists and i'll need the boxen.

The thing they always leave out

[slappyjack]

of these numbers are the important ones. Of those 69% of adults that use the internet ....

• < 1% have /. accounts
  
• 1.15% have posted stuff on /. as an AC, then never cane back again
  
• 4% actually care that Microsoft is dropping support for Win98
  
• 15% understand the concept of an Email Client
  
• 18% are using a machine 6+ years old, and spend 3 hours a week calling tech support complaining how "their stupid software doesnt work"
  
• 29% have seen goatse.cx
  
• 37% use high speed connections
  
• 43% Call their kids to ask them "Did you get the email I just sent you?"
  
• 45% have emailled a newsgroup and yelled at them for using filthy curse words
  
• 48% don't understand the difference between "download" and "install"
  
  • 15% are pretty sure they've "downloaded the internet"
    
  • 65% Think they need to "install the internet"
    
  
  
• 50% are afraid to use their credit cards online, but will gladly give it over the phone to someone they've never met
  
• 57% Have searched for the Paris Hilton Sex Video
  
  • 3% Were actually capable of finding it
    
  
  
• 68% "accidentally" got one of them porn-modem-dailer-trojans "through no fault of their own"
  
• 72% have lists of over 100 people to whom they forward jokes to
  
  • 6% actually strip out all hte greater-than symbols and format the emails nicely
    
  • 18% send jokes multiple times a day
    
  • 88% have sent the "god kills kittens" picture
    
  • 97% do not understand why people are angered by this
    
  
  
• 85% Think Outlook IS email, and MSIE IS the internet
  
• 92% Send 4 Mb images to their friends that are still using modems
  
• 95% Still Double-Click submit buttons
  
• 98% are complete morons, and will never learn how to use their machines properly.
  

Progress, baby!