Honestly, I wish I could stop using the internet.
I make a lot of things and enjoy sharing them because other people might find them useful. It has often led to wonderful and inspiring conversations. Yet it's obvious there's something very very wrong happening with American culture that began around the time of social media platform consolidation. "Being online" entails a distinct mindset and attitude that is incompatible with in-person socialization, but the two spaces are nonetheless continually mashed together and propagated by various forces in government and media. You have to ask yourself why.
I'm not sure of the answer but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
It's surprising how many people here equate "the Internet" with "social media". It's like having access to 1,000,000 x the Library of Alexandria every day and only being interested in keeping up with what people are talking about in the lobby
My dad doesn't use the Internet. Not on principle or anything, but he grew up without it, has friends but meets them in person or talks on the phone, same as he has for the past 40 years. He's retired now, but never needed it working as a skilled tradesman with a county job. In retirement, he still builds stuff, but physical stuff. No need for Internet.
My ex-wife's mom also didn't use the Internet, but she was a schizophrenic who believed the FBI was following her around her entire life and has spent much of the past 40 years institutionalized.
So those are at least two very different types of people, and that's just people living in big cities. I'm sure there are still a fair number of rural people who couldn't make much use of the Internet even if they wanted to.
Another ex of mine grew up on a farm in Amish country. Not Amish, but all the neighbors were. They didn't use Internet.
A significant portion of the US is illiterate [1]. One might assume that being illiterate affects internet usage. Not quite as romantic as neo-Luddism, or even making a conscious choice not to expose oneself to potentially problematic patterns of communication.
I've been using the Internet since 1992-3. Lately I'm feeling more and more like these 7% have the right idea.
My brother is one of them -- hard core blue collar worker, eschews a lot of modern technology, still carries a flip phone, and doesn't even use SMS. If I want to talk to him, I need to make a voice call, like a caveman. He doesn't have his cell phone turned on most of the time so his landline is the best way to reach him -- he even has a home answering machine. Not voicemail from his carrier, but an actual answering machine (though it's digital, not cassette tape).
His wife's view of the internet is pretty much only Facebook.
His kids are typical young adults, they have iPhones and are regulars on Instagram, Tiktok and other places that oldtimers like me don't usually visit -- they've moved on from Facebook... once their mom started using Facebook, they stopped using it.
Does this include the roughly 1% of the US who are in prison/jail? They generally do not have ready access to the internet. Then there is a unknown percentage of convicted felons who, while "free", are barred from internet use.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_ra...
I think a lot of people just don’t like the internet that much. My girlfriend certainly wouldn’t use the internet given the choice, she’s in her mid 20s, with a postgrad degree from a top uni, but really only checks her email once every two days.
It’s not just exclusive to old people. There is a cadre of young people who think that the internet is just stupid noise. You obviously just don’t hear from them much.
I’m not quite as extreme as her, but I don’t have any social media and I use the internet nearly only for work. Hacker news is the only thing I really comment on.
My first question is, did they explain that Netflix/Hulu/etc. are "using the Internet"? I looked through the methodology and wasn't sure.
A lot of TVs have a Netflix button now. If someone else set it up for them, they may be completely unaware that they are using the Internet, possibly every day.
Roughly speaking: it's the old, the poor, the uneducated, and the rural.
That's not terribly surprising.
I can imagine not using it much after I retire. Honestly it doesn't offer a whole lot IMO. I'll likely keep email and use maps/navigation though, as they are useful.
They didn't mention religion. I would guess that's also a factor, at least for some of the older Mennonites, Amish, Hasidic Jews, etc.
7% of Americans say they don't use the Internet when polled.
Some unknown percentage of that is the Lizardman's Constant[0], some of them mean "not much", plenty of them use the map on their phone and don't think that's "using the Internet", probably a decent amount who use Facebook to look at pictures of their grandkids but figure they aren't using the Internet because they don't own a computer (if you told them a smartphone is a computer they would look at you funny). Some are religious plain folk and genuinely don't use the Internet, some are retirees who only have a land line (and genuinely don't use the Internet).
[0]: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and...
It's funny how so many people came here to complain about the state of the internet... on the internet. Maybe it's just me and I don't get it, but if you don't want to be on the internet anymore, just yank the ethernet cable out of your computer and cancel your plan. One less bill to pay, right?
Coming here to complain and not seeing the ridiculousness in it makes me think some of the people in this thread need to take a long look at themselves and ponder if they might, in fact, be part of a certain cohort that actually makes the internet a worse place to be.
Just my two cents. Feel free to downvote.
I bet an online poll asking “do you use the Internet?” would probably also get on the order of 7% negative responses.
Investigating the "last holdouts" for anything is usually interesting. "The last 7%" is a heterodox group by definition.
That said, I don't think the way this data is presented tells us much about who they are. It just tells us how many they are (spoiler: few) within each demographic group.
Besides being backwards, I'd also posture that sampling and surveying a "last 7%" would be very hard. Things get quirky at the tail.
People rationalize with “I don’t look at the bad parts” and “I can quit anytime I choose, I just choose not to right now.” People don’t see that they’re addicted to something that is destroying all that is good. Using Facebook or Twitter on a regular basis is bad, in some cases it turns lethal. Even worse is functional addiction, where it warps you slowly over the years, too gradually to notice. We regulate big pharma, we should do the same with big tech companies that are built around manipulating human minds (google, Facebook, Twitter). They used to put cocaine in Coca Cola. We are at that point with tech products. Coca Cola business model seems far more ethical, and they cause diabetes.
A friend of mine, working for an ISP mapping the regions where there is still only dial-up access, is referring to these people jokingly now as "the lucky ones with intact brains".
Nowadays, at least in the country I live, if you don't have someone in your family able to complete some tasks for you on the internet i'm not sure it would be possible to not have a modicus of internet access. I also think this is even worse than that, I would add that it becomes very difficult to not have a kind of smartphone with a way to install current apps, more and more some services are available only through apps.
An interesting numeber would be the percentage of people who are stuck behind a NAT and can't host their own minecraft servers, remote desktop, or whatnot without having the technical expertise to configure manual port forwarding and such.
The Redecentralize movement I think tries to shift the use of the Internet to a healthier direction both socially and technically.
I wish I could limit the use of Internet to 1 hour per day. Like the olden days in the early days of internet.
Internet was given in our university for only 1 hour per day. It was possible to live in this manner even when I used to do programming. All programming documentation was available as PDFs or downloadable copies. I remember the MSDN documentation for C++ could be kept on the local machine. For Python I used to keep a PDF copy of the tutorial and reference i think.
These days I don't know anymore if that style of working will still work. Software has become so complex and error messages have become so many and so complex that I think we need access to internet all the time while programming. To see resolution to strange errors in Stack Overflow or on GitHub issues.
I wish all software developers did not assume that I am connected to the Internet all the time. It will be good if we can have a world where local-first internet-optional style of programming is still there.
While I'd love to use the internet less, it has become clear to me, over the years, that it's an essential tool in pursuing relationship with people in their twenties. For better or worse, a lot of the social experience has been outsourced to the virtual networks: from organizing parties to sharing ideas to a friend to having fun together (nowadays done with online games), we seem to be less and less able to verbally formalize the things our ancestors were naturally good at (you'd call this "social intelligence").
It's not even that it's relevant to use it, it's just that people forget about you if you don't. Loneliness is a real huge problem among the youth -- without the internet it'd be unbearable.
I would have guessed the figure was closer to 20 %, which it was around 2010, so I guess I'm 10 years out of date.
I wonder how the survey was conducted. Is it possible that people who don't use the internet are also difficult to reach in other ways ?
My uncle-in-law. Basically a retired farmer. He has a cell phone but I think just uses it as a phone. He hand writes letters. AFAIK he has no use for the internet.
My mum had never used the internet by herself, she's 81. My dad occasionally uses email if I send him photos of the kids (maybe a couple of times a month). He might use a web page to book a hotel a few times a year. That's it. I'm pretty sure he isn't "missing out" as such. They are both active and fit and have hobbies and friends around the country that they visit normally.
As soon as I can find myself a stable career that does not involve the internet, I'm throwing away my computer and smartphone.
Would be pretty interesting to learn more about that tiny fraction that are urban, educated, young, and well paid.
Very old people. There you go.
Going to school or even having relationships with people under 40 is impossible without the internet.
Nitpick: In the table where they break it down by category, it seems implied what percentage of each demographic says they don't use the internet (e.g. 25% of people 65+), with no mention of what fraction of non-internet-users are 65+. Both numbers would be interesting!
My parents live in a very rural place. Not only is internet ungodly expensive there but people don't think of the internet as part of their way of life. I imagine this number is much bigger than 7%, though that alone is a lot of people.
I wonder how clearly the survey defined "internet" for respondents. I can see a lot of people thinking they don't use it, but they do. Like the many worthless AOL subscriptions that still haven't been cancelled.
I am currently staying with my parents in upstate NY, and we do not have high speed internet. I am able to tether on my phone, but we obviously cannot stream netflix etc.
It really is a weird world not being hooked up to the grid.
My mom does not use the internet. She is 87. We’ve tried to teach her to use email. Once you explain the process at her level of technology, you realize how complicated to use it really is.
Do all phone calls (even from a landline) go over the Internet at some point these days? If you make phone calls, can it be said that you do use the Internet?
So rural, old and poor. Surely there is no surprise there, unless you have never met someone in all three of those categories.
16% cannot drive
8% cannot speak English (8% of over 5s).
I'd say 93% is 100% in this case...
Let’s suppose they call a customer service desk that uses Internet tools to help them—or they’ve paid for a transaction on Square. Have they technically indirectly been a beneficiary of the Internet? Does that count as using it?
> 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?
The happy ones.
I don't know what definition of "use the internet" Pew Research used, but I suggest that a useful thing to ask would be whether people can easily access a typical web site, or at least one that has been designed to be accessible. That's probably what the authorities are most interested in: it tells them roughly how many people can pay their taxes, fill in the census or book a vaccine appointment online, and it tells them how many people can buy things online.
If you define "use the internet" in that way then there are indeed millions of people who use Facebook but do not "use the internet".
they are happy. This is what they are.
The smart ppl
This sounds like a dream to be honest.
OA
Infants and toddlers make a big part
tl;dr: Internet non-adoption is linked to a number of demographic variables, but is strongly connected to age – with older Americans continuing to be one of the least likely groups to use the internet. Today, 25% of adults ages 65 and older report never going online.
The happiest Americans.
The smartest Americans. Not hacked. Not facebooked. Not twittered or Instagrammed. Just smart happy people.
The poor, the old, the young. A lot of people that aren't adults have no use for the internet.
I dream of not using the internet one day.
I envy them.
Amish
They are probably the happiest Americans there are. It’s unfortunate that Gen Z and beyond won’t know a life before ubiquitous mobile Internet.
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Vast majority of American children who grow up today are living with the internet. This "7%" number will continue to decrease over time until the population has churned the antinetters.
I used to work in the Caribbean when internet there was ridiculously expensive.
Local social life was fantastic - I missed nothing about the internet. Also - I missed nothing about not keeping up to date on latest news - locals just didn't care what was going on for the most part - the latest "outrages" were 100% irrelevant. If you went to bar at night, and IF they had a TV on, it was sports.
So you'd come back to the states - and you'd have to catchup on everyone who had said terrible things.