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The number of people in the United States who use the Internet increased steadily from 2000 until 2012, when the percentage of offline adults fell to 15 percent. Since then, despite efforts by the government and social service organizations to encourage Americans to get online, that number hasn't budged, according to Pew.
Why are some Americans so reluctant to sign on? A third of those surveyed who aren't online (34 percent) said they don't think the Internet is relevant to their lives, or that they're simply not interested in what the Web has to offer. Another 32 percent of people who don't use the Internet said the technology required to access the Internet is just too tough to get the hang of, and 8 percent said they were "too old to learn."
But some people said they don't use the Internet because they cannot afford to do so, according to Pew. The survey data showed that 19 percent of those not online cited the expense of Internet service or owning a computer as their reason for staying offline.
Facebook and Google have been in the news recently because they want to get everyone online. What if those people don't want to?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @11:01PM
There's much more to life than "being online". I've been in IT for decades but I am getting really tired of Zuckerscheize and the boys[1] with their ruthless, dehumanizing "plans" for world domination and the destruction of privacy for the benefit of their financial backers and the multi-national marketeering b@stards, etc, etc.
[1] - google, uber, microsoft, apple, oracle, facebook, etc, etc ad nausuem.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Tuesday August 04 2015, @01:32AM
I occasionally contemplate cutting the cord, at least for a while. The internet is the new TV in a lot of ways.
Back in 1990, I took care of my mom while she died. At the end, the only thing that was left for her was watching TV. I sat there with her while her last minutes got fed to commercials and it left a pretty bad taste in my mouth, so about 1992, I quit cable/rabbit ears and limited myself to watching movies on VHS, then DVD. Blah blah blah, yeah, I'm one of those smug kill your television bastards.
But I find myself totally tied to the net. I wake up and immediately pop open my laptop hitting my usual sites before, during, and after breakfast. At lunch I peruse the google news feed on my phone. When I get home I fire up netflix or do some surfing. During work, my (all too frequent) breaks are looking at stuff on the net. Sometimes I waste an entire day that way. Here I am right now, doing the same thing, posting a comment to a post by someone I don't know and will never meet, for a few other strangers to read and agree with, disagree with, laugh at, or go gSS (grammar nazi) on.
The thought has occurred to me that I could be whiling my last minutes away, slightly more interactively than by watching commercials on TV, but just as uselessly. For all that I've learned using the web, I sort of feel that on balance, I'm wasting too much life on it. And as for learning things, I it is hard to remember back to the days before constant connectivity, but I still managed to learn interesting things and pick up random skills. It's just that it involved going to the library.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @03:20AM
I killed my TV in the 90s, and about two years ago, decided kill my Internet connection.
Some time passed, during which, I was far more productive and had a lot more free time. One day, I decided to try to bypass my phone carrier's blocks against / detection of tethering because I was going on a trip, and it would be nice to keep in touch via email (I suck at tiny phone keyboards; I still emailed from work even when I had cut the wire at home). I played with munging TTLs and a few other things, but it turns out the only thing they were doing was user agent snooping. If a desktop browser UA string was detected, they would forwarding port 80 to an upsell portal. Now I am back to sitting in front of the glowing screen-- tethered to my phone.
Good Luck!
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday August 04 2015, @12:17PM
I still managed to learn interesting things and pick up random skills.
On a slight tangent, in theory you can learn from TV but in practice its 99.999% formulaic filler, and once you know and understand the filler there's no point in watching anymore, and my tangent is I wonder when "the internet" will turn into that. Arguably we're already there, for the average youtube cat video watcher or compulsive facebook addict. I wonder if the remaining "good stuff" on the net will get frozen out in network-non-neutrality and SJW attacks and stuff like that.