RSSFour out of five adults agree on TCP/IP
By Angela Gunn | Published November 18, 2008, 9:16 PM
Harris Poll results released this week give an overview of who in the US is online, where they log in, and who's still lagging.
The poll, conducted by telephone during the latter half of October and the first days of November, reached 2,020 adults who were doubtless glad that the pollsters weren't asking about McCain and Obama. Of those polled, 81% say they log in from at least one location; 75% from home, 43% from work, and 32% from "other" (libraries, cybercafes and the like). respondents spent an average of 14 hours per week online, three hours more than they did a year ago.
That 81% percent works out to an estimated 184 million adults, the most since Harris started polling more or less yearly back in 1995. In that year, just 17.5 million Americans were online, or 9% of the population back then.
Harris found huge jumps in usage during the first few years of the survey -- to 19% in 1196, to 30% in 1997, and a wild jump in 1999 from 35% to 56% -- after which adoption numbers have settled into a mellow 2-4% gain each year.
At this point, all demographic segments report that a majority of their members are online, though seniors (65+) and those with high-school educations or less are comparatively underrepresented. Interestingly, Harris's race/ethnicity breakdowns show that only African Americans have exactly the representation online (11%) that they do in the general population; whites and Hispanics are 1-2% underrepresented, and Asians...strangely enough, Asians don't appear in the stats at all.
White, black, or brown; rich or poor; dropout or postdoc -- we can all apparently agree on one thing, and that's that computers are sort of pointless without Internet access. A whopping 98% of computer users go online. And the other two percentage? The poll doesn't say, but one does wonder what they make of the cultural obsession with LOLcats, Netroots political activity, and the word "fail" as an adjective.
fail
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2,020 adults polled equates to 184 million adults online? You've got to love these sample pools.
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"Computers are sort of pointless without Internet access?"
Really?
Well, perhaps to someone who has no clue as to what they can be used for except chatting.
That asinine attitude explains a lot here!
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"19% in 1196, to 30% in 1997,"
12th century internet... fascinating.
/wink
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Good catch.
Wow..only an 11% jump in 801 years.
Well, slow and steady wins the game, right?
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Beats the 0% jump in the preceding Million years.
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True...
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didnt the kings have msn??
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After glancing at the last paragraph I understand the headline, so it passes!
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Yes, BN needs some work on that headline.
Mind you, if it were anything else, the majority of people would most probably not have read the article...
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There's a thin line between clever and obtuse when it comes to headlines.
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Yes, and if I didn't cross it now and then I'd be too timid to do my job correctly. Thanks for looking! ;-)
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4 out of 5 adults have no fawking clue what TCP/IP even means...
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Even if they have not heard of Transmission Control Protocol, I guess they might have heard of the Internet Protocol.
Test them on UDP I say!
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