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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: 2) by stormwyrm on Tuesday August 04 2015, @03:46AM
My wife has been asking for a full Windows computer, but when I finally gave her one two years ago, she never even turned it on. Why? The Android smartphone I gave her before that has been good enough for nearly all of the things she needs to do that would have otherwise needed a full computer. The phone also doesn't get so easily infected with viruses. Yes, I know this is theoretically possible, but it doesn't seem to anywhere near as trivial as it seems to be on Windows: she occasionally gets prompts to download APKs from some dodgy sites but obviously she can't run them the way she might have when made to download an EXE on Windows. As far as I know there are also no drive-by exploits for Android like those that exist for Windows.
Modern smartphones and tablets are generally good enough for the majority of the home computing needs of the majority of ordinary people, and they also in general have less of a malware problem than Windows does. If she needed to do word processing I have her do Google Docs or the LibreOffice Android port with the tablet with one of a few Bluetooth keyboards we have lying around. If she wants a bigger screen while doing that there's a wireless HDMI dongle to cast the screen of the phone or tablet to one of our televisions. We don't even have a printer at home any more, as we need to print so seldom these days that going to a business centre or Internet café at the local mall suffices during the rare times a hard copy of a document is actually needed. Why then bother with a full Windows machine and the headaches of keeping it clean while connected to the Internet?
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.