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20% of U.S. Population Has Never Used Email
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?"
So there are 20% of Americans who wonder why in the world Hormel would be sending canned ham to people, and still complain about the amount of junk mail they receive via the USPS.
Amazing.
It's 18% of all households, not 20% of the US population.
From TFA: "Many people just don't see a reason to use computers and do not associate technology with the needs and demands of their daily lives," Barrett said. Shocker.
People still RENT their phones...
http://www.clientleasingservices.com/
750,000 of them, according to usatoday...
http://www.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/2006-09-14-phone_x.htm
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
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?
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20% of America doesn't use e-mail because they don't have anything to say via e-mail. Consider the same logic with regard to first posts ;)
...will they 1|\|cr3A53 7H3 51Z3 0F 7H3R3 /\/\3/\/\83r?
"I may be full of crap about this game, and I may be wrong, and that's fine." -Jack Thompson
ilovegeorgebush
Just about 100% of all young, single females have never sent email to me!
... by e-mail and technology.
On the other side, most people that doesn't know how to use e-mail ask techies they know for help.
I have already forgotten how many mails I have sent for my mom and aunts.
- Human knowledge belongs to the world
20% of the US population hasn't used email?
Good lord who cares!
I bet 85% of the US population have never been in a war.
I bet 100% of the US population are under 19' tall.
At least 20% of the US population will never see this post.
Hell I wouldn't be surprised if 10% of the US population don't even own a cell phone.
It's rare that I would complain about the news here but whoever approved this AND whoever submitted it, wtf, really? Just WTF.
"Or are these people just Luddites who mourned the demise of the telegraph and have also never used a telephone?"
Its that sort of arrogant crap that makes people vow to never use a computer. Some people have no need for a particular tech. I NEVER send text messages, they seem a waste of time. I don't use RSS and have no idea what twitter is. I never use myspace and don't have a facebook page.
So fucking sue me.
This infantile attitude of "I use tech X and thus so should you" just shows the immaturity of the poster, not that they are in any sense 'better' than those not using that technology.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
The article says that it was a phone survey. This means: 1: The people are obviously not "Luddites who mourned the demise of the telegraph and have also never used a telephone", since they used a phone to answer the survey questions. 2: Most of the tech-savvy people I know don't even have land lines. They use cell phones or things like Skype, which are difficult to survey for various reasons. The people who go those routes have generally used email. Therefore, the sample population was already skewed toward people who wouldn't have used email anyway.
To put this into some form of perspective, strange here on Slashdot I know, but in reality for most people internet became a potential reality around 1998 (AOL going onto the internet from its walled garden) or at best 1996. So maybe another way to look at this study would be
From zero to 80% in 10/12/15 years, how the US has embraced email
Sure lots of the people here on Slashdot might have had an email account in the 80s, but that is an insignificant minority. I actually think that it is pretty impressive at 80% penetration given some of the literacy issues in the US education system.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Sending a snail mail letter requires no major initial investment.
Sending your first email requires an investment to purchase your computer and subscribe to an ISP's plan.
Making a phone call requires a minimal investment in a phone, and a monthly fee of about the same price as internet access.
Sending an SMS usually requires either a 1 or 2 year commitment to a cellular provider's service plan, or the purchase of a phone for use with pre-paid minutes.
So, if these 20% want or need to provide a written record of communication, they can use snail mail at a cost of 50 cents (plus an initial investment of a dollar for a pen), or they can spend $500 on a computer and $20 a month on an ISP.
If they want a faster response than a snail mail, they *pick up the phone*. Which trumps email and IM on speed if more than one question/response is needed.
Or they use an SMS or voicemail or an answering machine if the intended recipient isn't available.
For "Joe Average", the cost/benefit ratio of email is absolutely horrible compared to other forms of communication. And since there really isn't any pressing *need* for them to have email, they don't make that investment. From anecdotal observations, I'd also say that another 20% of the population *with* computers and internet access *don't use email* on any regular basis. They use the internet for entertainment and information *not* communication.
As for me, I've been using email since the late 80's, early 90's. However up until 2005, I had *never* sent an SMS. And until mid 2006 when I had a reason to use SMS more, I had only sent maybe 3 SMSes.
So, for a service (email) that has no real value to many, has many alternatives, and requires a sizeable initial investment, is it any surprise that 20% of the population hasn't bothered with it? One wonders if perhaps they're the smarter ones.
How about over 60?
These groups are overwhelmingly not emailers (yes I know a few members of either of these groups will trump up "I do" - you've self-selected so you're not representative)
Once you take these groups out, you probably have about 80% of the population. I'd have to say that I doubt if all, or even close to all, the remainder have used email. Therefore I assume the total of never-emailed is higher than the 20% cited.
However, in the grand scheme of things, so what? People can lead full and happy lives without technology. Hard as it may be for the tech-obessed to even consider it, not everyone is like them.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
from wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States
Poverty in the United States is cyclical in nature with roughly 12% to 15% living below the federal poverty line at any given point in time, and roughly 40% falling below the poverty line at some time within a 10 year time span.
if you are living below the poverty line then a computer and the increasingly large amount of power it uses are a unavailable luxury.
Why are people who see no need to have a computer being called Luddites? I don't know that any of these people are opposed to progress, they simply don't have access to email equipment or don't use email even if they have access.
My mom and dad are definitely not Luddites, my mom used to be a Cobol programmer and my dad taught me electronics when I was small; they simply don't see any need for a computer in their home. They have cell phones, a 5.1 channel sound system, and DirectTV; but no computer.
When people see no need for televisions in their homes, should they also be called Luddites?
especially when you consider that about 12% of the population is under 10 years old and 16% of the popluation is over 65. a majority of these people are not going to be sending emails.
Blazing Spiders
The summary, even leaving aside its tone, is flawed in that it seems to presuppose this is by choice.
I think people underestimate the amount of poverty - even in the US, where the official definition of poor still most often includes obesity, a car, 2 televisions, airconditioning, and other things seen as luxuries across most of the world.
If you have a family of 4, and are making a combined income of ~$30k/year, and have payments to make for housing/car/food/medical, you might be stretching to pay the PHONE bill much less have luxury money to spend on frivolities like a web connection. And yes, they are frivolities: if all of your friends are in similar financial circumstances, you have even less incentive because they aren't going to be online EITHER. Finally, even the web is squeezing these folks out - browsing by modem SUCKS, and it seems that more and more sites are building fancy flash front-ends that take minutes to d/l at modem speeds.
-Styopa
In US of A, email is only for old people.
Those of us around IT don't always see them regularly, but remember, 16-17% of the population just aren't that smart. And per another comment, 1% are in jail. I saw a college alumni survey about a decade ago and email use really dropped over about the age of 55 -- which I guess now might extrapolate to 65? Lot of Americans over 65. Lot of Americans at the poverty level as well.
Admittedly, many of these factors are coexistent but 20% sounds really good all things considered.
...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)
According to this Newsweek article from 2002, in 2002 44M of the (then approx. 280M) US population were functionally illiterate.
http://www.shashitharoor.com/articles/newsweek/illiterate.php
From other sources about 11-12% of the US population is below the official poverty level, and I'll bet there's only partial overlap of that figure will the functionally illiterate group.
From that perspective 80% of households using e-mail seems remarkably high, especially for such a new technology with such a high barrier (computer ownership/literacy, internet access, intellectual curiosity) to entry.
And a good percentage of that cant afford internet service in the first place.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The Pew Internet & American Life Project has some excellent information about how Americans use Internet and mobile technology. Despite Slashdot, Twitter, MySpace, et. al., a huge slice of America only uses modern communications technology when they need to, while a smaller slice tries to avoid it.
For many people, technology is something they struggle to adapt to, rather than rush to embrace. It can be frustrating for these people, and very time-consuming. There's only so much time in the day, and if I weren't keeping up on the latest geekery, I could be using that time to read more history, ride my bike more, become a karate black belt, or whatever.
Most people are not technology-obsessed, and there will always be a certain percentage of the population that is too old to care about the latest new thing that makes it easier to hook up with barhopping friends or more easily consume huge libraries of P2P pr0n.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
20% of America lives like the better-off portions of the 3rd world (it's not all the Congo and Burma).
If you didn't have an office job and half your family and friends weren't dispersed around the country or world, and you only used publicly provided internet like a library for essentials like taxes and job hunting, who would you email?
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Both my Grandmothers -in their 80s have never used a computer, and are pretty representative of their generation. Obviously there are exceptions, but computers weren't much of their lives. They both get off the phone after a minute, because they are worried about "long distance" charges to - lol.
..........FULL STOP.
'20% of America doesn't use e-mail because they don't have anything to say via e-mail.'
"And a good percentage of that cant afford Internet service in the first place."
Just from my personal experiences here, but Even At a Group home, (if you've ever been to a group home, people there are getting over serious mental issues, or recovering from serious addictions) there was a mac set up so people could e-mail, the younger patients used e-mail the older ones tended not to, I'm actually kind of surprised that they could even get to '80%' with all the old foggies out there, who are due to mental deterioration living in a different time from the rest of us.
BTW every public library i have been to, even one in a city the size of 1000, had in it Internet terminals (as of 2008) the computers were donated, of course, but they still had 4 Internet terminals in a library that literally had only 5 book shelves total!
even a 'drop in center' for people with mental illness now has 'public Internet' terminals, which were donated, the facility in question had Internet because the county has offices for their CSP program there as well...
the Internet is free just about everywhere you go these days, even if you can't afford it at home, and don't have a car, taking a bike ride to the nearest free computer terminal is probably good for your health even walking is possible in some places for some people.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html