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20% of U.S. Population Has Never Used Email

Posted by timothy on from the not-necessarily-against-their-will dept.

Ezratrumpet writes "A recent PC World article notes that 20 percent of the U.S. population has never sent an email. Does this number over- or underestimate the actual number of people who know nothing of email? What are the implications of this statistic to our society? Or are these people just Luddites who mourned the demise of the telegraph and have also never used a telephone?"

4 of 279 comments (clear)

  1. Households, not population by RonnyJ · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's 18% of all households, not 20% of the US population.

  2. Shocked?! by sysusr · · Score: 5, Informative
    According to http://www.internetworldstats.com/am/us.htm:

    Internet Usage Statistics
    215,935,529 Internet users as of Dec/07, 71.7% of the population, according to Nielsen//NetRatings

    Latest Population Estimate
    301,139,947 population for 2007, according to the Census Bureau. If 28.3% of the population aren't internet users, why is it a surprise that 20% haven't sent an email?
    --
    \x72\x6D\x20\x2D\x72\x66
  3. Re:So? by Jimmy+King · · Score: 3, Informative

    As to TFA... I didn't read it, but there doesn't seem to be anything abnormal or surprising that some people haven't used email. I never learned to drive a car. Does that make me abnormal?
    It depends on where you are, but here in America, yes, that makes you abnormal. If you're in the wilds of Africa, probably not so abnormal. Never using a fairly common method of communication which has been around for quite some time now as technology goes is also abnormal. I didn't have a cell phone until less than a year ago because I had no need for one. I finally only got one because work was willing to foot the bill. I was also abnormal in that regard, especially within my age group and peers.

    Abnormal doesn't mean wrong, stupid, or anything else bad. It just means you're not doing the normal thing that the majority of people do.
  4. And the illiteracy rate is... by mraiser · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...approximately 20% A government study showed that 21% to 23% of adult Americans were not "able to locate information in text", could not "make low-level inferences using printed materials", and were unable to "integrate easily identifiable pieces of information." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States)