Who's On The Internet?
People going online today to find news or pursue other interests look increasingly like America as a whole they're less computer-savvy, less affluent and include more women than the band of early Internet devotees, according to a poll released Thursday.
This more mainstream audience is interested in more mainstream topics than those first drawn to the Internet, indicates the survey of American adults by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.
Sending or receiving electronic mail is the most popular activity for the 41 percent of adults who now use the Internet. And weather that most common of topics is the type of news they seek most often.
In 1996, about 23 percent used the Internet, and news items related to technology were the top draw.
"The message here is that more (people) on the Internet does not necessarily mean more of the same," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew poll.
The survey found women have overtaken men among newcomers. Of people who said they began using the Internet within the previous year, 52 percent were women and 48 percent men. That's close to the breakdown of the population as a whole.
Middle-aged and middle-income people of both sexes are also coming to the Internet in increased numbers, as are people with less than a college education. Among Internet newcomers, 40 percent never attended college, and 23 percent have household incomes below $30,000 a year.
"They are more middlebrow, they're less affluent," Kohut said. The most significant change, said Kohut, is the broadening of the network's use to people who never attended college.
"This is a very different demographic pattern, and it's a very different use pattern," Kohut said.
Despite that rapid move to the mainstream, the 74 million Internet users in the United States are still generally younger, better-educated and more affluent than the population at large.
Among Internet news users, 64 percent said they looked for weather information online. In 1996, 47 percent sought out such information.
Those who seek news online cited three main reasons: to get information unavailable elsewhere, for convenience and because they can search for particular subjects.
Overall, online news consumption is up dramatically. In 1995, 4 percent of Americans went online for news at least once a week. The figure is now anywhere from 15 percent to 26 percent, based on recent Pew surveys.
The nationwide telephone survey of 3,184 adults, taken in November, had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points for the public as a whole and for Internet users. For smaller subgroups, the margin of error was 3.5 percentage points.