In a world that has never been more connected through technology and the internet, there is still roughly 15% of American adults who are not plugged into the World Wide Web, according to a study by Pew Research that was conducted in May and released this week. Kathryn Zickuhr, research associate for the Pew Research Center’s Internet Project and lead author of the report, talked with the Voice of Russia Miguel Francis about non-users and their lifestyles.
Who are these non-users? What is their occupation? That is an interesting question about half of them are seniors, they are of age 65 and older. And they are also disproportionately more likely to be retired or unemployed and they tend to have lower income level. In your opinion, what are the main, so to speak, lifestyle differences between users and non-users? Those adults tend to be older and with young adults who are still on the work force, they may have many experiences with the Internet with their friends and the co-workers whereas for the most of these offline adults the Internet is not a part of their lives. They don’t use it, they might not know that many people who do or they don’t live in a household where someone else does, just about a quarter of them live in the household where someone else goes online. And why, do you think, so many people are still addicted to social networking sites and Internet in general despite numerous reports of spying? People don’t really find utility in social networking sites and other services. In our surveys we ask people a lot of questions about privacy and information they want and post online and people generally want to share information about themselves but they also want control over what they share. So, when people share things on social network sites, it doesn’t mean they don’t care about privacy, it just means that they just want to share information and they want to control who sees this information. But what do you think is the main reason to be addicted to social networking sites and internet in general? I think people are addicted to communication with others. And social network sites are how they do that on the internet. Source: voice Of Russia
