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posted by martyb on Monday October 01 2018, @08:37PM   Printer-friendly
from the how-do-other-countries-compare? dept.

Pew Research:

The shares of U.S. adults who say they use the internet, use social media, own a smartphone or own a tablet computer are all nearly identical to the shares who said so in 2016. The share who say they have broadband internet service at home currently stands at 65% – nearly identical to the 67% who said this in a survey conducted in summer 2015. And when it comes to desktop or laptop ownership, there has actually been a small dip in the overall numbers over the last two years – from 78% in 2016 to 73% today.

A contributing factor behind this slowing growth is that parts of the population have reached near-saturation levels of adoption of some technologies. Put simply, in some instances there just aren't many non-users left. For example, nine-in-ten or more adults younger than 50 say they go online or own a smartphone. And a similar share of those in higher-income households have laptops or desktops.

The poor, the rural, the elderly, and those who couldn't care less are the hold-outs.


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  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 01 2018, @09:21PM (4 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday October 01 2018, @09:21PM (#742491) Journal

    Well - rural, definitely. Elderly? Probably not so much. The poor? Maybe. And, those who couldn't care less are holding out for nothing - they just don't give a damn!

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  • (Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Monday October 01 2018, @09:30PM (3 children)

    by suburbanitemediocrity (6844) on Monday October 01 2018, @09:30PM (#742500)

    I would think the elderly would be the ones most interested in 10Gbps.

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 01 2018, @09:48PM (1 child)

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday October 01 2018, @09:48PM (#742505) Journal

      Not in my experience. A lot of the people older than me have very little interest in the internet. Those who are interested are pretty undemanding. They've never experienced true broadband, so the lame connections they have seem to be adequate. Older people who really want faster connections are probably mostly interested in video. A recent article told us that Netflix still makes a profit on snail-mailed CD/DVD. Those who are "streaming" understand that they have to download a couple hours in advance, to watch the entire movie without buffering. That's still a huge imporovement over what we grew up with - check the TV Guide to see if any local stations are broadcasting anything we wanted to see. (In my case, that happened less and less as I matured, until I just quit television.)

      My wife and I are both fairly tech savvy - and we don't even feel a real need for Gbps. We would be very happy to get anything better than 2Mbps. Anything between 10 and 100 meg would be awesome: she could watch her movies, and I could do update/upgrade without interfering. Or, I could play an online game while she's watching movies. Or - the possibilities are endless of course. Gbps may be essential for a business, or an educational facility, but we're never going to see it way out here, and our relatives won't miss what they don't know about.

      • (Score: 2) by archfeld on Monday October 01 2018, @10:35PM

        by archfeld (4650) <treboreel@live.com> on Monday October 01 2018, @10:35PM (#742517) Journal

        I'd jump on expanded service, but it hasn't got any better just more expensive. Every round of takeovers they jack the claims of speed and bandwidth, fail to deliver and just charge more. Were are not getting closer to better bandwidth but further away at greater cost.

        --
        For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday October 02 2018, @11:48AM

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 02 2018, @11:48AM (#742719)

      My MiL REALLY likes her kindle because now every book is "large print format".

      However that doesn't require 10Gbps as she can't read as fast as I can read and type.