Slashdot Mirror
The Digital Differences In Americans
antdude writes "When the Pew Internet Project first studied the role of the internet in American life, there were big differences between those who were using the internet and those who weren't. Today, differences in internet access still exist, especially when it comes to access to high-speed broadband at home. From the article: 'Virtually every U.S. household with an annual income over $75,000 is online, but that’s only true for 63% of adults who live in a household with an annual income under $30,000. The numbers look quite similar for different education levels: 94% of adults with post-graduate degrees are online, but 57% of those without high school diplomas remain offline.
Beside the obvious economic barriers to entry, though, the Pew poll also found that half of those who don’t go online do so because they just don’t think “the Internet is relevant to them.” One in five of those who are not online today think that they just don’t know enough about technology to use the Internet on their own.'"
People earning less cash can afford less things! Who'da thought it?
If that's true, then who's misspelling the captions on all those cat pictures?
How do these people get their pornography? Surely, they don't enjoy the librarians tutting at them when they use the free library computers to consume media of naked people.
...are by definition below average intelligence.
Why would we think that 100% of people would be able to use the internet on their own? Or get a higher education for that matter?
If you remove the single largest factor for non-adoption (age), the rates are generally pretty high, and the other factors mentioned make less difference. That's why I wish these surveys focused more on multi-factor analysis instead of these easy-to-do but less-useful analyses where you just pull out single factors. Sure, people with lower incomes are less likely to be online, and people with lower educational attainment are less likely to be online, but those two factors also correlate strongly, and matter differently for different age cohorts. Which factors have independent effects after controlling for the others? That's the kind of analysis that would be more helpful...
So yes, 22% of Americans don't use the internet. But a large proportion of those are over 65: in that age group, 69% of people don't use the internet. That's just generational change.
If we look at young people, age 18-29, a full 94% use the internet. There is probably some education/income effect in there, but a much weaker one: only 6% of total young people, even including the poorest and least educated in the statistics, don't use the internet.
Note also that educational attainment isn't separate from the age effect, because going to college used to be less common in my grandfather's generation than it is today, so there are some confounds baked into those numbers, too.
In short: Where are the goddamn crosstabs?!?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I've got family that live out in the country, and their dial-up service was so slow and noisy that they could only reach 14.4Kbps for 5 minutes at a time. Naturally they dropped service and haven't tried it since.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
I get all the gossip I need from my neighbors, bartenders, and hair stylist
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
TV is for poorer, less educated people.
But then how are less educated people supposed to become more educated? NBC, ABC, CBS/CW, and My/Fox haven't been doing a lot of good in that respect IMO.
that's funny, since in most the USA you can get basic cable plus internet for under $100 a month. they should drop some premium channels. then hook a $50 or less piece of shit PC running linux or bsd to the net. you remind me of the photo of our "poor" people (welfare queens) flocking Michele Obama with their iphones and $200+ footwear.
Given that most of the people who are "permanently offline" are people aged 65 or over, who are simply too old the learn the ins & outs of the often times complex & confounding interwebs, maybe there should be a project to create a kind of "Eldernet" for older people? This would be an alternative, simplified internet with bigger text & images, text-to-speech functionality (for those who are vision impaired), much simpler navigation & search (maybe voice-commands like "how much does a lawnchair cost at the local Walmart" or "take me to the Bank of America customer services page"). Also, crucially, no advertising, pop-up windows, and other things that can clutter up the screen and make for mental confusion would be allowed. In short: A sort of easy-to-use Fisher-Price version of the Internet & browser (& maybe OS too), for those too old to deal with the complexity and nagging problems of, say, a Windows 8 Laptop running IE or Firefox. Another nice idea would be to offer free internet-access to people past retirement age, paired with elderly-user-friendly "Eldernet" functionality. It might make the world a more civilized place for all involved...
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
first world problem.
Facts take all of the premium out of arm waving - T. Reynolds
Were they included? Most everyone i know in ALL economic segments have one.. and those are "online".
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Just head to any major city and start looking for the homeless camps. It does exist.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Only 44% of the residences which can get cable TV actually buy it. In comparison, 68% of US households have broadband access. (3% are still on dialup.) That's impressive reach for an industry that barely existed a decade ago.
Bear in mind that a significant fraction of the US population barely reads. 14% of the US adult population has "below basic literacy skills." They are not likely to find a computer very useful. Another 15% of Internet penetration and everyone who can read will be connected.
Measured by a different study, the most connected major countries are at 80%, +- 2%. The US and Japan are at 78%, Germany is at 80%, Korea is at 81%, and the UK is at 82%.
1 - Use the library.
2 - Get some roommates. Divide price by number of roommates
3 - Service plus wifi router with antenna on roof. Divide price by number of neighbors willing to split the cost. (the implication is that your neighbors are fairly close and not rich. Anyone on SSI is probably not living in Beverly Hills or Manhattan)
Nothing worthwhile ever happens before noon
http://www.amazon.com/The-Dumbest-Generation-n/dp/B001JQ383K/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1334530582&sr=8-2
I live in New Castle,IN, rent a room, not an apartent or house, though there was a point where I was on section 8 in an apartment. I don't drive and Medicaid pays for some services I get through Meridian Services which includes grocery shopping trips. I get internet access through Metronet. I go to food pantries to stretch my food dollar. Lifeline pays for my cell phone. With those caveats it's possible to get internet access and a used computer while only gettiing SSI, though the situation is unique.
I think that's the where the idea of using a cheap laptop and free public wifi has its best application -- 7% of income for four months (assuming $200 price) and nothing thereafter.
But you are right -- at some point a person is so poor, even bus fare to the library to use a public terminal would be a burden. But that doesn't change the fact that for the vast majority of people, having net access is not such a financial hit as to be impossible to manage -- for most people who don't have net access, it is an issue of not seeing the internet as valuable to them personally. As a random example, I don't subscribe to Newsweek because it isn't valuable to me. My lack of interest has nothing to do with cost and a lot to do with the fact that the same material is available online in a less stale format. On the other hand, I do subscribe to National Geographic, even though their material is also online, because I like it and it has value to me over and above the digital experience.
Anyway, at this point in time, I suspect that a good portion of the people without network access of some kind, don't have it because they don't value it, not because it is beyond reach financially.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
yeah, amazing multi-billion dollar art collection the Roman Catholic Church has built by centuries of contributions of the poor. probably augmented by some plundering from things like the crusades, too, or assets seized from "heretics".
Idiots tend not to want to use the Internet as much
You must be going to a different Internet than I have been.
>> One in five of those who are not online today think that they just don’t know enough about technology to use the Internet on their own.'"
Curious, in that you can make the same statement regarding genitalia and birth control.
I seem to recall the Vatican stumbling upon a decent amount of gold during WWII, also.
Internet access has a monthly fee. Internet access at throughput capable of video has a higher monthly fee. The "farmer five" OTA channels in the United States have no such fee. The assumption that I detect is that poor people are more likely to consider broadband a droppable luxury service when trying to make ends meet.
I'm seriously considering giving you a pity fuck.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil