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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?"

10 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.

    1. Re:Households, not population by DigitAl56K · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Just as a side: When I wrote this I did so in humor, but it does hold an element of interest. People who have never used e-mail are going to be far more susceptible to scams that those who have used e-mail have become well aware of and learned to ignore. The art will be in perpetrating them over forms such as SMS, which allows only short messages, successfully. I would say 1/5 people a reasonably large target population.

  2. So? by DigitAl56K · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What are the implications of this statistic to our society? None. If people needed to use e-mail then they would use e-mail. The summary seems to imply that if you've never sent an e-mail there is something wrong with you or you fail at life. I can think of plenty of careers that don't even involve working with computers, and some people like to enjoy a more "disconnected" lifestyle.

    Or are these people just Luddites who mourned the demise of the telegraph and have also never used a telephone? I don't know, TFA doesn't seem to mention that. Why don't you accuse them of being illiterate freaks or something while you're at it?

    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.
    1. Re:So? by DigitAl56K · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Why does everything come down to carbon emissions lately, and what does that have to do with the summary. But sure, I'll bite. You're using e-mail. The entire time you're writing it you're sitting at a computer using between 150W and 300W (typical). Probably half a dozen devices between your computer and the destination server are responsible for transmitting the packets over long distances (your modem, the various routers and mail servers). The NSA intercepts your e-mail, automatically runs AI on it in a massive data farm, which uses quite a lot of CPU time. Meanwhile a letter is read with zero power emissions at both ends, and it is transported with tens of thousands of other letters, the inefficient part of the transport being only near the local destination.

      But honestly, I just pulled that out of my ass, and so did you, and probably so will anyone else who replies. But that will still be more interesting than the questions raised in the summary..

    2. Re:So? by DigitAl56K · · Score: 5, Insightful

      However, computers are very useful tools in *any* lifestyle and they help save a lot of time and resources. Living without computers and e-mail these days is nearly as cumbersome as being illiterate. Let me temporarily step into the shoes of Joe Shmoe. I get up in the morning, brush my teeth, take a shower, get dressed and head out to my construction job. I work hard for 8-9 hours. During the day I grab some coffee and some lunch. I listen to the radio. I come home to my wife at night, picking up some groceries on the way. We have dinner together. I go hang out with the guys at the bar for a while, we chat about the game on TV and whether we like Hillary or Obama better. I head back home, help put the kids to bed and turn in.

      Why do I need to use a computer, and what is the big difference it's going to make in my life?

      I often feel sad that I'm so tied to the computer and similar devices - there are plenty of people out there who I feel live a fuller life than I do simply because they're not attached so heavily to computers. While we're sitting here writing to each other on Slashdot about people who don't use e-mail, others who perhaps don't use e-mail are spending time with their families and friends. I would not say I'm envious of people who don't use e-mail, but I can see the positive side of it.
  3. 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
  4. Far, far worse: by johannesg · · Score: 5, Funny

    Just about 100% of all young, single females have never sent email to me!

  5. It was a Phone Survey by Metallic+Vortex · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  6. 10 years.... by MosesJones · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  7. 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)