And it’s not just the ones who still have dial-up.
Although it may seem like almost everybody’s sister, dog, and grandma have already discovered the world wide web and set up various social media accounts, a recent study surprisingly proves otherwise.
According to the study conducted by Pew Research Center, only 90% of American adults uses the net. 10%, on the other hand, don’t see any use for this technological innovation. Considering that the US adult population consists of about 229 million, this means that around 23 million Americans don’t use the internet at all. It’s a decrease compared to the 48% of Americans who didn’t use the internet back in 2000, but in this day and age, 23 million is still a lot of non-Internet users.
According to the study, this number consists mainly of Black or Hispanic folks who live in rural areas and are aged 50 and above. Most also did not graduate from high school and make less than $30,000 per year.
Based on a separate study from 2013 also conducted by Pew Research, there are three main reasons why some people don’t use the internet. The first and biggest percentage (34%) said that they don’t use the internet because they didn’t think the internet was useful or relevant to them. The second biggest percentage (32%) said that they don’t understand how the internet works, a small percentage (8%) of which believes that they are too old to learn. The rest (19%), meanwhile, don’t use the internet because they can’t afford internet services, let alone a computer or laptop.
