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: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @10:52PM
(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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @11:02PM
I have multiple family members (parents and their siblings) who are 80+. What on earth do they need the internet for? Most of them don't even watch TV, it is all phone and radio for them. They probably wouldn't take it even if you gave it to them for free.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @12:16AM
Must be nice.
I'll assume those folks like Reactionary talk radio.
Most people of a certain age can't find music they like via broadcast media.
There are 3 "Country" music stations here in the L.A. area.
What all of them play is Top40 pop music with a bit of twang.
I have tried listening and they never played Haggard or Jones or much of anything I recognize as Country Music.
To get twangy music that I like, you have to stream it.
The kind of music my Mom likes hasn't been on any radio station anywhere near where she has lived since about 1963.
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @07:26PM
Actually, one is nothing but NPR and the rest listen to the local classical station.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @09:06AM
PORN of course!
if dirty old men knew about the sick twisted shit you can watch online they would be fapping away as hard as any young guy
(Score: 4, Funny) by Hartree on Monday August 03 2015, @11:25PM
I'm posting a reply for one of those offline types.
He says: "But I'm Amish you insensitive clod!"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @11:27PM
He gets a computer and an internet connection. The computer gets infected with crap. He gives up.
Months later I fix his computer and add anti-virus and other stuff. He gets back online and eventually clicks on the wrong link. The computer gets loaded with crap the anti-virus can't fix. He gives up again.
I fix it again and everything's ok for a while. Then some software updates come in and nothing works anymore. He gives up.
Eventually, he realizes reading books or watching TV is less painful (and less expensive).
(Score: 5, Informative) by krishnoid on Monday August 03 2015, @11:32PM
For everything else, there's the Chromebook :-)
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @12:25AM
Your brother needs a better tech support guy.
One who knows there is an OS that doesn't require anti-virus would be a good start.
-- gewg_
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @12:34AM
If you've never seen a Linux virus, you're either 12 years old or you're a goddamn idiot.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @01:03AM
Well, I have never seen a Linux box that was pwned by a drive-by infection.
Haven't see one mentioned in any of the several Linux forums I visit either.
A proper permissions paradigm averts most of the nonsense that afflicts Windoze.
Closing the holes QUICKLY takes care of the rest.
As an example, Heartbleed (which isn't technically even a "Linux" vulnerability nor is it a "virus") was reported to its developers April 1 and patches were available April 7.
The MICROS~1 method of putting layers of 3rd-party band-aids on **known** serious wounds is a poor approach to security.
Software vendors: PATCH your damned holes YOURSELF and do that QUICKLY.
Making users wait for the 2nd Tuesday of next month to get fixes is just moronic.
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @12:41PM
I always thought being an idiot increases your chance to see a virus.
BTW, I've never seen a Linux virus, and I'm not 12 years old. But how much of that experience comes from using Linux, how much comes from not installing every shit I come across on the net, how much comes from not opening every spam mail I get (let alone their attachments), and how much comes from using NoScript, is of course hard to say.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @01:51AM
I use Linux on three machines and I would never wish it on a person without considerable computing skills. It's a pain to set up and a greater pain to manage.
Nerds may love Linux, but normal people don't. There's a good reason it's virtually non-existent on the desktops of the world - it's the least user-friendly OS in existence.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Tuesday August 04 2015, @04:09AM
I don't think it's the least user friendly UI by a long shot. There are things I like better than OSX, though Yosemite makes it easy to like something else. For about two years ending 1.5 years ago, I had to use Windows for a while -- Win 7 to be exact and after more than a decade away, it was a total pain till I got the hang of it again. Compared to what's out there, the Linux UI compares quite favorably.
More of an issue though, is the way things get installed and what people can install. I think most people who use a computer could learn to navigate a linux desktop, at least the Gnome or KDE varieties without much difficulty. But people like to just download and install crap, and their experience falls down there a lot when using linux (and yeah, life would be better if they didn't download and install crap, but they want to do it). Synapitc or Yum would seem like such an ideal alternative but the concept is sort of foreign. Of course, if they want to watch Netflix or play most games, things get even more difficult than they're used to. Then there are the occasional unresolvable (without heroics) dependency issues. Honestly, HD space is so copious currently, I wish programs would just come with their own dependency libraries.
Anyway, not sure where I'm going with this and I've sort of lost my thread. I like Linux and find it generally easier to use than the other big 2 OSs, but that is basically just experience. If Apple's App Store becomes a more widely understood standard way to get software, I think people will be more accepting of the Linux method of using repositories from relatively trusted sources as the main method to install software, and _then_ people will find Linux easier to use.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @07:36AM
It's not the user interface that's a problem - that's pretty much like any other. It's the fact that if anything goes wrong, it is very difficult for the average person to fix. Any help online starts with "open a terminal and type...", which is a kind of archaic, DOS-like approach to solving problems. Few useful GUI tools exist to solve most problems and, if they do, they are not referred to by the online experts.
Other issues exist. If you want to change the mouse cursor size, for example, you need to do it in two places - one for windows and one for the desktop. That's not intuitive by any stretch. Many people would get frustrated quickly by these things. If you like things out of the box, that's fine, but any customization (like for visual impairments) are a PITA. Try changing the vertical bar text cursor size in editors, for example (not the mouse cursor) - it's next to impossible in most distributions.
BTW that earlier post is not a troll, except to *nix nerds that can't take criticism of a flawed OS. Linux kernel is fine, but the varied assortment of inconsistent UIs out there are nothing but a mess.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday August 04 2015, @08:23PM
If it says "open a terminal and type …" then you can usually replace that by "open a terminal and copy/paste this to it". I cannot simply copy/paste a description of how to do it with a GUI.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @04:14AM
I remember my days in Windoze forums. RegEdit [google.com]
Clearly, that OS is too difficult for Joe Average.
-- gewg_
(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.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Monday August 03 2015, @11:56PM
So what? If they really need to get online they can you know. Public libraries across the nation have free labs PCs. We are a very rural area and have more than two dozen machines at five locations in our one small parish. You can buy tablets now for less than $50 and get free WiFi all over the place. Bottom line, getting onto the net is possible for pretty much everybody and yet some people just do not care. So what? Their decision.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @02:12AM
Having five locations for anything is not very rural. Living 40 miles from the nearest paved road and knowing the last name of everyone in the county is a better description of "very rural".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @12:46PM
Having five locations for growing wheat is very rural. Well, OK, five is a little low. ;-)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Snotnose on Monday August 03 2015, @11:59PM
If she hadn't used the internet she wouldn't be my ex :(
My ducks are not in a row. I don't know where some of them are, and I'm pretty sure one of them is a turkey.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @12:15AM
Sometimes, there are just so many ways to interpret a post, . . . Nah, don't even want to know.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @12:36AM
She discovered she could buy vibrators online and decided she didn't need a husband anymore.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @12:55AM
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @01:14AM
She discovered not all men wear and Atari shirt and adult diapers during sex.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @02:25AM
That's what makes him such a great catch.
-fetlife
(Score: 3, Informative) by Gravis on Tuesday August 04 2015, @12:42AM
If she hadn't used the internet she wouldn't be my ex :(
you know, you didn't have to send her a link to that goats site. i find your "internet initiation" excuse to be pretty flimsy.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @12:48AM
They don't know about othernet yet? Hilarious.
(Score: 2) by drussell on Tuesday August 04 2015, @02:30AM
I find that statistic difficult to believe. I would think it is higher than 15% but who knows exactly who they were doing their survey on and their methodology.
I know many people who don't use the internet at all for a variety of reasons. Some are elderly, some are not, (although a particularly high percentage of the 70-80+ year olds I know ARE using the internet) but don't really think most of them are missing much of anything by not being online.
Kudos to them for helping to balance out all those others who are seemingly glued to every electronic device in sight! :)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @02:38AM
Been a web developer since the early days (mid-1990s). This past couple of years I've been finding myself less inclined to use the internet or even the computer (unconnected).
While it has utterly changed business, education & culture, there really isn't much value in the internet (read: 'web') for most people. I could see myself completely free of the need to even have an internet connection (I don't even stream TV or own a mobile, how's that for 'hipster'), except for email. If it weren't for my job I wouldn't need the internet at all, and in fact have come to loathe the web for the most part. The rest of it, I can take it or leave it. Vast wasteland, indeed.
Remember life before the web? Got a lot of good reading in (my house is full of bookcases of books - that yes I have read). Listened to alot of good jazz (sadly my collection of over 500 CDs got stolen about a decade ago, still haven't replaced my turntable or tape deck - mostly listen to FLAC now (that's computer, but not internet)). Play table games of all sorts. Go out to see live music & eat at good restaurants. Watch movies or DVDs. I am a (very) amateur musician, and I like to draw & paint. Hiking & biking in the summer (fuck the gym).
Seriously, the number should be reversed - there are probably only about 15% of the population that really benefits from the web. Nothing wrong with those people who know they don't need it - in fact I hope they stick to their guns.
Me? One of these days I will cut the cord forever, likely sooner than later.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday August 04 2015, @03:24AM
I do consult howto's online all the time. I'm also constantly looking stuff up on Wikipedia and sourcing components for my projects. The internet has a lot of value for me. I remember that kind of stuff used to be hard to find--you had to somehow hear about an enthusiasts' club if you even had anything in your town, or you had to get lucky digging through the stacks at the library. And none of it was searchable. I like that the world is searchable now.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Tuesday August 04 2015, @11:04PM
There's a lot of value on the Internet, you just have to know how to use it properly. No, I'm not being facetious, that's true for a lot of technology (you can't do much with a book if you don't know how to read, etc.).
At the very least, it provides access to a veritable mountain of good information, much faster than flipping through reference books at the library, and near-instant communication with anyone else on the Internet.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @02:57AM
My dad is just beyond retirement age, and is pretty technical, having a PhD in a technical field. He wrote software (in a domain-specific language) for years at work before retiring. He doesn't use the Internet. He can definitely afford it. He definitely has the technical chops. He just doesn't.
Mom does. She keeps up with family, and feeds dad all the best nuggets. I've even got her on Linux, now, so that I can upgrade her on my schedule, and not have to worry about malware so much.
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Tuesday August 04 2015, @05:20AM
My grandfather is in his mid-80s and hasn't been online at home, ever. He's got an older computer and some games, and that's all he wants. It may as well be a supplemental Nintendo for all he cares, as long as it has Solitaire.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0, Troll) by Balderdash on Tuesday August 04 2015, @03:54AM
Fuck yo Fakebook, nigga.
I browse at -1. Free and open discourse requires consideration and review of all attempts at participation.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday August 04 2015, @06:15AM
Complain as much as you like about the Pets.com bubble, and the over-hyping of "Web2.0", the internet has drastically, exponentially changed the rate of exchange of information across the planet. Take it from me, who used to have to hand copy papyrus, and give it to some guy going somewhere on a ship, a boat blown by the wind, and have to wait for months to find out if the message was received. And up to like, 30 years ago? people had to submit stuff to publishers and wait for them the send out printed matter on dead trees to university libraries before anyone could actually read it. Do we not see that the Net has done more for science, knowledge, society, than any other human inventions since the steam-powered printing press? (Gutenberg was just a precursor!). And now, only at the end, do the MBAs realize the folly of their plan. We can select, we can filter, we can and do ad-block, and eliminate java-script. Why? Because, Mal, you can't stop the signal. You can't stop the signal.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @07:47AM
Those 15% are most likely not academics. And I'm pretty sure that there are more than 15% of the population who never visited an university library, and we don't consider that a problem, do we?
Yes, the internet is a great thing. But that doesn't mean that everyone must use it. GPS is also a great thing. Is it therefore a problem that I don't own a GPS device?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @07:41AM
Why is it considered important that those people are online? I mean, if someone doesn't see an advantage in being online, there's no reason for him to go online. It's everyone's free decision.
I don't visit sports events. Is this also considered a problem? If not, what is the difference between both?
Indeed, I guess for some who are not online, we can be glad for it, because their computers would soon be a part of a botnet.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday August 04 2015, @12:27PM
Its an opiate of the masses. When they talk about "watching cat videos" thats a dog whistle polite company phrase for "shemale tranny pr0n on /b/" For the folks in charge that is much better than the masses awakening and becoming politically active or protesting or pretty much doing anything other than working and shopping.
Its just like voting for one of two candidates the rich guys carefully selected "Oh well, guess I can't complain about the results, after all, I voted!"
Or TV / sports as a bread and circuses.
Or the original opiate of the masses, that being religion.
Every idiot whining on /r/ is one idiot not carrying a protest sign down main street.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @02:17AM
Cat videos are tranny vids? I figured one would browse the pubic library for those.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Tuesday August 04 2015, @11:57AM
One issue is the provision of mandated public services to what is now a minority of people. Should national/local government have an obligation to make their services accessible (or indeed usable) to people who are not online? It is a similar problem to provision of mandatory servies to minority language speakers and disabled people: it doesn't make good economic sense. In some places it is now difficult, if not impossible, to file your taxes on paper rather than online. Should one be required to apply for state benefits online; or should there always be an efficient offline alternative available?
Furthermore, if one is required to interact with local or national government online, would it be reasonable to have to do so via, for example, Facebook; or require a Google account?
I'm no Luddite; but I am not an enthusiastic early adopter either: I like to think through things and look for unanticipated disbenefits. We know how to shuffle paper around to get things done: we are less good at shuffling bits, especially in the long term. Ink on paper is a pretty good long-term storage mechanism, and the format tends not to change much. Microfiche is a pretty good backup mechanism.
In my view, if an obligation is to be imposed that you access services on-line; then there should be a universal service obligation (in much the same way as there used to be an obligation for postal organisations to deliver to all addresses) so that even people in highly rural areas have access to a usable online service at the same flat rate as someone in a city (like postage rates).
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday August 04 2015, @12:29PM
Should ... local government have an obligation to make their services accessible (or indeed usable) to people who are not online?
Welcome to the public library computer lab. Admittedly you'd have to be pretty dumb to not assume there's keyloggers all over them, and who knows what bodily fluids on the keyboards, but with some care, maybe usable?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by scruffybeard on Tuesday August 04 2015, @12:21PM
About 11% of adults in the U.S. don't have a drivers license. Why is it so hard to believe that there are still people who don't find the Internet useful, or relevant to their lives.