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Americans Using Internet 'Just for Fun'
Ant writes "CNET News.com reports that nearly one-third of American Internet users go online just for fun." From the article: "A survey of 1,931 Internet users conducted by Pew Internet & American Life Project in late November and December 2005 found 30 percent of respondents said they went online "for no particular reason" on the previous day. That was up from 21 percent in a November 2004 survey. The survey also showed that 34 percent of online men were surfing for fun on an average day in December, compared with 26 percent of women."
Seeing how much porn is on the Internet, and assuming Internet porn addicts have fun with it, I am suprized to hear that only 33% of the US surfers use the internet for fun
-- www.punkmusic.com
2000 users. More than this number of internet users can be found at any average sized University...
If the "survey" is made at a uni, maybe there will be a 100% of "using internet to study"...
Also if you go to a nurcery school, maybe there will be more than 60% of female surfers...
This surevy really says nothing at all..
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I wouldn't consider "just for fun" the same as "no particular reason." In fact, the latter, which was the true response, could indicate that those people go online because they feel compelled to, sort of like an addiction.
The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe.
I'm sure mnost of us are almost always within a few feet of an internet connection.
When I'm at work, or at home, I've got machines with 24/7 internet connectivity. I use the internet to check my mail, the weather, any news updates, settle disputes, find out things, look around to kill time, verify syntax of command, read movie reviews, and practically every thing else.
Sometimes I'll go over to my home machines, and just check about a half a dozen tabs in Mozilla which are always up just to see if anything new happened since the last time.
For many of us, the internet has become ubiquitous, and just sort of always there. It's hard to nail down any one specific reason why I'm connected. It's just there all of the time.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
"30 percent of respondents said they went online "for no particular reason" on the previous day"
This survey found what people claimed they went online for. How many were actually going online to look for something (discussion with people, interesting articles, etc.) but weren't aware of this? Don't make the mistake of taking survey results as anything beyond "this is what people responded with when asked these questions".
Of course people are going online just for fun. The internet is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. It's just a medium.
Why do you read books? Is it purely for research purposes, or are you just having fun?
Why do you go to the mall? Are you there strictly for purchasing things, or are you also there to have fun?
What the national media has not seemed to grasp yet is that the Internet is not some spooky alternate reality with a different set of rules than the real world (for most people). It's just a way of moving information back and forth and communicating. Yes, it's the first medium to combine those two purposes. But people don't use the Internet just to use the Internet... they're just doing something that happens to be on the Internet. Asking why people go online is about as insightful as asking why people wake up in the morning.
Why do you wake up in the morning? Is your life just to work and make money to provide for yourself and your family, or do you also like to have some fun?
It's just a means to do other things, people. Some of us do work on it, some of use play on it, and most people do both.
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Fun would be a particular reason to go online. Saying that one has no particular reason for going online is saying that one may have more than one reason for doing so, not necessarily just "fun."
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
When I was a boy, I had to walk 18 miles, uphill, in the snow, with no shoes on, just to get to Yahoo.com. And back then, it only had 4 links.
// This is not a sig.
The other 90% are really teriffic liars.
shut up.
Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.