Dialling Up and Logging On

"Dialling Up and Logging On":
Who Uses the Internet
and How They Use It
Rachael Zubal
SOC400 Sociology and the Internet
A web-based version of this lab can be found at:
http://web.syr.edu/~razubal/zubal_whousestheinternet.htm

More online, doing more provides statistics on who is using the Internet, specifically how Internet demographics are more and more matching our general population, and how it is diversifying in terms of age, race and ethnicity. It very briefly includes some statistics on what people are looking for and doing online, most notably the report focuses briefly on buying products on-line, searching for health information, searching for financial information, accessing on-line news sources, and work-related research.

Yahoo! Internet Life Magazine issued a special report that compiled results from several different surveys about "How America Uses the Net." In the introductory article, the authors report, "Is the Net, at last, an accurate mirror of the American population? It's getting there, but it has a long way to go on several fronts" but that "Overall, the numbers show that the Net has become a part of everyday life" (p. 93).

In researching other sources on demographics and how they use it, I found a large variety of statistics and other research findings that generally concur with the Pew report:

Internet access and use is steadily increasing and diversifying.

Women have steadily been outnumbering men online; although women outnumber men on-line, men spend more time on-line and view more individual web sites.

E-mail is the most widely used activity on the Internet.

More than half of U.S. households have a computer and almost as many have Internet access.

At the same time, there are also sources that divulge this information and at the same time raise issues that warrant further exploration and raise important issues to focus on:

Internet access is still unavailable to a large portion of the population, especially those who are societally disadvantaged.

Because so many people are online, there are concerns and debates about Internet addiction and what constitutes "normal" Internet use

And despite that there are increasing numbers of people online, there are many who are offline, and will stay offline

I feel it is most important to focus on why the Internet is not used by so many people in our society. More and more studies confirm that more "affluent" individuals (higher income, more education, white) are much more likely to have access to the Internet than people who they define as "disadvantaged." These disadvantages are identified and classified as everything from one-parent households, poorer families, geography (i.e., rural versus urban), disabilities, race/ethnicity, education, work status, and even age. The term used most to define these disadvantages is "The Digital Divide."

Again, some of the disadvantages of these people are quite obvious. First, it takes resources (money) to own a computer and to have an Internet connection. People of all different kinds, people both with and without disabilities, people of different ethnic and racial backgrounds, people with different levels of education, people who live in different geographic locals, people who are both employed and unemployed, do not have money to own a home or to put food on their table. Why would these people even have any interest in technology or accessing the Internet when they can't be sure it will improve their lives?

The potential is there for technology to help improve lives and "enable" people, but there are many other societal divides that need to be bridged before the Digital Divide can be addressed. Although some of these statistics on Internet use are also beginning to change, we as a society need to work not only on technology access and literacy but both convince and teach people of all backgrounds that it can be used to change their lives for the better.

As a brief but interrelated point, it is interesting to note the number of people who are not on-line and have acknowledged that they do not have any intentions in doing so. In an on-line newspaper article on FloridaToday.com, Sean Hao reported on several different studies from Pew Internet & American Life Project, Forrester Research, eMarketer, Gartner Dataquest, and Telecommunications Reports. As he details in this article, many of the reasons why people aren't logging on that range from costs for technology to security/privacy issues to just plain lack of interest. Therefore, he concludes from these reports, access doesn't always equal use or interest. This is an interesting contrast to those who wish to have access and have a great deal of interest in logging on.

Even further beyond getting access and using the Internet is the prevalence of what is being defined as Internet addiction and defining what is normal Internet use. The first question that I would raise is that who is the one that defines Internet addiction? Their are many psychologists and mental health professionals who use typical addiction definitions and apply it to Internet use. Secondly, there is the concern that Internet use and the potential ensuing social isolation is not good. Since use of the Internet could possibly be defined in relation to the behavior of the people who use it and that there is a potential for the Internet to change lives for the better, this issue does warrant further research.

These are just a few of many topics about Internet use that surfaced while searching for information. The bibliography below has links to several other reports and web sites of interest to those seeking information how people are gaining access and how they use the Internet.

In closing, I'd like to share the perspective of Dr. Adolf D. Ratzka who is Director of the Institute on Independent Living, an international organization concerning independent living and disability issues. In the October issue of their electronic newsletter, Dr. Ratzka wrote an editorial, "Falling through the Net?," that reaffirms much of what I've discussed: "With access to the new technology our group stands to gain great opportunities for joining the mainstream. But without access many of us will be left even further behind" and "We cannot afford to reject the possibilities offered by technology, but neither can we afford to uncritically embrace technology...."

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES

Bartlett, M. (2001, June 15). Study: Net users mirror nation's gender breakdown. USAToday.com. Online: http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/nb/nb5.htm [This appears to be a broken link but reports interesting results from a study by NetRatings.com]

Bedrin, J. (2000, May 22). Families fued over online time. Family Circuits: FoxNews.com [FoxNews.com no longer has this feature online on technology, which is unforunate because they had regular news items that were of great interest.]

Bruno, R. B., & Gerrity, M. (2000, September). The big picture. Yahoo! Internet Life, 6(9), 93-94. (http://www.yil.com only features issues for 2001)

Center for Media Education (CME). (2001, December 12). Teensites.com--A field guide to the new digital landscape. Washington, DC: Author. Online: http://www.cme.org/teenstudy/

Clewley, R. (2001, August 28). Programming a way out of poverty. Wired News. Online: http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,45922,00.html

FCC: Rural Alaskan residents can hook into internet through schools. (2001, December 14). eSchoolNews online. Online:http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStory.cfm?ArticleID=3379

Fox, S., Horrigan, J., Lenhart, A., Spooner, T., Lewis, O., & Carter, C. (2001, February 18). More online, doing more: 16 million newcomers gain Internet access in the last half of 2000 as women, minorities, and families with modest incomes continue to surge online. Washington, DC: The Pew Internet & American Life Project. Online: http://www.pewinternet.org

Girl Scout Research Institute. (2002). The Net Effect: Girls and New Media.
Online: http://www.girlscouts.org/news/net_effect.html

Hao, S. (2001, August 10). Many choose to stay off Internet. Floridatoday.com
[Unfortunately this news web site only archives articles for 14 days; this lengthy article reported survey results from Pew Internet & American Life Project, Forrester Research, eMarketer, Gartner Dataquest, and Telecommunications Reports. See below for more information on demographics.

Hoffman, D. L., Kalsbeek, W. D., & Novak, T. P. (1996, July). Internet and Web Use in the United States: Baselines for Commercial Development [Project 2000 Working Paper]. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University. Online: http://ecommerce.vanderbilt.edu/baseline/internet.demos.july9.1996.html

Holmes, L. (1997). What is "Normal" Internet Use? About.com
Online: http://mentalhealth.about.com/library/weekly/aa100697.htm

Household Internet use survey 2000. (2001, July 26). Online: http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/010726/d010726a.htm [Although this article cites statistics from Canada rather than the US, much of the statistics cited have similar findings]

How The Internet Is Improving The Lives Of Americans With Disabilities. (2000, June 7). THE HARRIS POLL #30. Online: http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=93

Internet Use Up 3 Percent in January. (2002, February 13). Reuters.com.
Online: http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=search&StoryID=593815

Kaye, H. S. (2000, March). Computer and Internet use among people with disabilities. Disability Statistics Report No. 13. San Francisco: Disability Statistics Center, Institute for Health and Aging, University of California. Online: http://www.dsc.ucsf.edu/UCSF/pdf/REPORT13.pdf

Kaye, H. S. (2000, July). Disability and the Digital Divide. Disability Statistics Abstract No. 22. San Francisco: Disability Statistics Center, Institute for Health and Aging, University of California.
Online: http://www.dsc.ucsf.edu/UCSF/pdf/ABSTRACT22.pdf

Kirschenbaum, J., & Kunamneni, R. (2001). Bridging the organizational divide: Toward a comprehensive approach to the Digital Divide. Oakland, CA & New York, NY: PolicyLink.
Online: http://www.policylink.org/pdfs/Bridging_the_Org_Divide.pdf

Kraut, R., Lundmark, V., Patterson, M., Kiesler, S., Mukopadhyay, T., & Scherlis, W. (1998, September). Internet Paradox: A Social Technology That Reduces Social Involvement and Psychological Well-Being? American Psychologist, 53(9), 1017–1031. Online: http://www.apa.org/journals/amp/amp5391017.html

Lake, D. (2001, June 27). Are nerds people, too? The private geek: Surfing of the other kind. CNN.com Career. Online: http://www.cnn.com/2001/CAREER/trends/06/27/geeks.pass.time.idg/index.html

Leadership Conference Education Fund, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. (2001, Spring). From digital disconnect to digital empowerment: Building a more equitable society through leadership, investment, and collaboration. Washington, DC: Author.
Online: http://www.civilrights.org/publications/digital_report/

Mariano, G. (2001, August 31). Growth in online use slows. CNET News.com
Online: http://news.com.com/2100-1023-271548.html

Markoff, J. (2001, January 4). Starbucks and Microsoft plan coffeehouse web access. New York Times on the Web. Online: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/04/technology/04STAR.html
[Online articles by the New York Times are only available for a short time at no charge; most can be accessed through SU Library's databases]

Martinez, P., & Ennis, S. (2001, March-April). Organizing and hosting a cyber cafe. DisabilityWorld.org, Issue No. 7. Online: http://www.disabilityworld.org/03-04_01/access/cyber.shtml

Morahan-Martin, J. (1997, August 15). Gender differences in Internet use. Presentation to American Psychological Association, Chicago, IL. [This presentation was reported in APA online press release at http://www.apa.org/releases/interadd.html]

The Morino Institute. (2001). From access to outcomes: Raising the aspirations for technology initiatives in low-income communities. Reston, VA: Author.
Online: http://www.morino.org/divides/report.htm

National Center for the Dissemination of Disability Research (NCDDR). (2001). NCDDR survey 2000: Computer and Internet use. The Research Exchange, 6(1), 1-6. Austin, TX: Southwest Educational Development Laboratory, National Center for the Dissemination of Disability Research.
Online: http://www.ncddr.org/du/researchexchange/v06n01/

National Telecommunications and Information Administration. (2002, February). A nation online: How Americans Are Expanding Their Use of the Internet. Washington, DC: U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE, Economics and Statistics Administration, National Telecommunications and Information Administration. Online: http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/dn/index.html

National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). (2000, October). Falling through the Net: Toward digital inclusion. Washington, DC: National Telecommunications and Information Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce. (one of four reports in the series "Falling through the Net") Online: http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/digitaldivide/index.html

Newburger, E. C. (2001, September). Home computers and Internet use in the United States: August 2000, Special Studies. Current Population Reports No. P23-207. Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Department of Commerce. Online: http://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/p23-207.pdf

Nie, N. H., & Erbring, L. (2000). Internet and society: A preliminary report. Stanford, CA: Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society (SIQSS), Stanford University.
Online: http://www.stanford.edu/group/siqss/Press_Release/Preliminary_Report.pdf
More detail online at http//www.stanford.edu/group/siqss/Press_Release/press_detail.html

Pastore, M. (2002, January 25). Internet Key to Communication Among Youth. Cyberatlas.com
Online: http://cyberatlas.internet.com/big_picture/demographics/print/0,,5901_961881,00.html

Pastore, M. (2001, May 30). Internet Use Continues to Pervade U.S. Life. Cyberatlas.com
Online: http://cyberatlas.internet.com/big_picture/demographics/article/0,1323,5901_775401,00.html

Pastore, M. (2001, June 18). Women Maintain Lead in Internet Use. Cyberatlas.com
Online: http://cyberatlas.internet.com/big_picture/demographics/article/0,1323,5901_786791,00.html

Philbeck. J. (1997, November 20). Seniors and the Internet. Cybersociology Magazine Issue Two: Virtual Communities. Online: http://members.aol.com/Cybersoc/issue2.html

Pruitt, S. (2001, July 13). Are you surfin' in your necktie? Study: Web use at work is on the rise. CNN.com Online: http://www.cnn.com/2001/CAREER/trends/07/13/us.web.use.idg/index.html

Ratzka, A. D. (2000, October). Editorial: Falling through the Net?. Institute on Independent Living Newsletter. Online: http://www.independentliving.org/newsletter/11_00.html

Rodger, E. J., D’Elia, G., Jörgensen, C., & Woelfel, J. (2000, October). The impacts of the Internet on public library use: An analysis of the current consumer market for library and Internet services. Online: http://www.urbanlibraries.org/pdfs/finalulc.pdf

Thomas, K. (2002, February 13). Teen girls know their way around the Net, their parents. USA Today, Page 13B. Online: http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20020213/3852120s.htm

Trotter, A. (2000, April 5). Home computers used primarily for learning, families say in survey. Education Week on the Web. Online: http://www.edweek.org/ew/ewstory.cfm?slug=30net.h19

Urban Libraries Council. (2000). Impacts of the Internet on public library use: Basic fact sheet. Evanston, IL: Author. Online: http://www.urbanlibraries.org/Internet%20Study%20Fact%20Sheet.html

Other Sources for Demographics

http://www.forrester.com

http://www.emarketer.com

http://www.tr.com

http://www.gvu.gatech.edu/user_surveys/
http://www.gvu.gatech.edu/user_surveys/others/

http://www.survey.net/

Endnote: Thoughts About Methodology

My one criticism of most of the surveys and reports that I've discovered is their methodology. Telephone surveys can exclude a large part of the population, who may or may not have access to the Internet in other ways (school, work, libraries, cyber cafes, etc.). What about the people who want access but for whatever reason, simply cannot obtain it? And if you do a survey online, of course you may get an accurate accounting of who is using the Internet and what for, but how do you investigate who isn't using the Internet and why they are not?

Finally, many of these reports and statistics have an obvious time gap between data collection, analyzing and reporting. There is always a lag between data collection and data reporting, and this must be acknowledged as a shortcoming. While Internet sites specifically collecting this data are increasing the time lag between these reports (i.e., Cyberatlas is one of the best examples), there is still a potential for a large portion of the population to be missing from the statistics.