U.S. Home Internet Access up to 75%

waytoomuchcoffee writes "Over 200 million U.S. residents now have access to the internet at home, or 3/4 of the U.S. population. This is quite a jump, as only 51% of U.S. homes had access to the internet in August of 2000. Interestingly, among age/gender groups, internet access is highest among females 35-54."

I'm not a statistic (unfortunately)

[ziondreams]

I've recently dropped my phone line at home therefore dropping my home Internet access as well. Our household has 2 cell phones, I get plenty of Internet at work/college, and I can't quite afford broadband. I wonder how many others are in similar situations?

2cd tech bubble coming?

[DR SoB]

So it's 25% from the "great tech bubble", I wonder if that means that now would be a good time to start buying YHOO shares again? Although the tech bubble burst, it could almost be considered underrated, the issue was all the money thrown into the internet at one time caused the over-value, now it may be near corrected or even undervalued, so as the internet grows, so will tech stock.

And yet...

[ParadoxicalPostulate]

3 out of 4 people will not be able to tell you what bandwidth is.

I'm wondering about this "easy to use" business. It's true that it will get us more users in the short run...but if the system was such that you would be forced to acquire at least some understanding of what you were doing, eventually you would get similar number of users, only they would be a little bit more aware of what is going on.

It astonishes me that people don't care to learn about something they use every day, for perhaps hours on end.

Re:Not surprising

[Phoenix-kun]

This is true. One of my good friends is female and does very much of what you have listed, forums, email, web mistress, etc. In fact, she is, by far, the best competitive game-player I have ever had the pleasure to know, male or female.

Hopes in other corners of the world

[cda]

Since I'm from Romania here we see this like:

go to US plug your cable in the wall and the broadbad flows.

Now this is something I envy you for. Low rate decent speed access. Since here a 64/128 kbit goes around $100-$150 and the minimum wage is around $75 monthly ... you do the math.

But at least we cand get some online clients from US. The more ... the best

Re:Not surprising

[Sivaram_Velauthapill]

We buy more than half of all electronic devices and more than half of all computer games...

Are you sure about that? I would find it surprising if that were true--especially the games part.

Anyway, it doesn't surprise me women use the internet more. That is something I always expected would happen. First of all, there are more women than men so women will have slightly more numbers. Second, internet has great potential to replace or complement social relationships. Women seem to be more into "social stuff" than men.

Having said that, I think most geeks will be men. So tech-oriented websites, for example, will be dominated by men. It remains to be seen if I'm right...

Sivaram Velauthapillai

Quite a Jump

[jbrader]

Perhaps the real story isn't that the percentage of Americans online at home has grown about 25% in the last 4 years. I think the fact that we've gone from almost nobody being online in the early nineties to having 3/4 of the population on the net in only a decade is the really impressive figure.

Re:Not surprising

[SnappleMaster]

"You guys keep being surprised, but women make up half the work force where we spend a lot of time on computers."

In some sectors maybe. In "hardcore dev"... I've worked at 3 companies in my adult life (plus 4 more companies as an intern). The male/female ratio has been and remains approximately 10:1. My graduating class (Comp Eng) consisted of 80 or so guys and *zero* females.

Now don't get me wrong. I sure wish there were more chicks around. OTOH if I go across the street to marketing the ratio is more like 2:1 with the females on top (figuratively).

Personally, I'm surprised at the results (and wondering if they can be accurate).

Re:...internet access is highest among females 35-

[JPriest]

Maybe females between 35-54 are most likely to have kids that use the net for school?

I dunno, my mom seems to use a computer often for her digital camera, printing greeting cards, emailing Joe cartoon attatchments etc. So it could be possible.

Re:computers

[essaunders]

My father still has and uses an apple IIgs. A useable non-internet capable computer if I've ever seen one.

Hello desktop toys

[Colonel Angus]

From what I've seen through my work, it's exactly that 35-54 group that are keeping me in business. I have seen more junk running on these older ladies computers than I even knew was out there. A cat the falls down the screen, walks out a little cat door has been the highest offender. But other things such as "cute" screensavers (likely spyware), comet cursor's "cute" pointers and the like are just as popular.

Re:...internet access is highest among females 35-

[lysium]

and children are FBI agents.

More precisely, they are bots [newscientist.com] that report to law enforcement.

Re:...internet access is highest among females 35-

[Anonymous Coward]

Two things that may possibly affect this figure...
1. Most registration forms have a dropdown with female as the first entry(alphabetical order).
2. What does a null date default to? 12/31/1969, just about 35 years ago.

How many fake/minimally filled in registrations have you filled out lately?

Re:...internet access is highest among females 35-

[Lord Ender]

Actually, the reason is probably because the men are smart enough to share their home internet connections between all of their roommates (or even neighbors) with NAT and home networking or WiFi. So they only get counted as one person. But the girls are the ones that buy the multiple IP addresses and all that from the cable company. I'm not trying to be insulting. In my college town, it is only the girls' houses that pay to have more than one computer connected.

EverQuest

[WyerByter]

Wasn't there a story here a couple weeks ago, that stated the largest group playing MMORPG was that same group.

Those analogies arent very good

[Srin Tuar]

Better analogies:

How many digits are in a phone number?
How much gas does your tank hold?
What's your car's top speed?
How many minutes are on your cell phones calling plan?
How much milk comes in a typical jug?

Re:And yet...

[Brad Mace]

The difference is that you can use any of those things just as well without know how they work.

People who *don't* understand computers also seem to have some misconceptions about their simplicity. They treat computers like a fancy TV, ignorant of the complexity and the risks. Not surprisingly, these people do nothing to maintain or protect their computer.

Re:...internet access is highest among females 35-

[GAVollink]

Oh my - absolutely true. I hadn't thought of that... but my wife was the one who signed up for Cable, and my internet access is a rider on that. So my wife runs the 5 internet connected machines in my household (and logs on to check Email once a week or so).

Re:...internet access is highest among females 35-

[boaworm]

Hehe.. Well statistics suck!

For instance, one of the swedish insurance companies made a large study on car insurances and accidents. They came up with the conclusion that there was a huge peak in accidens with women aged 45-55, even higher than men 18-24 etc.

Of course this does not mean that women suddenly starts to drive like lunatics, just that by that age, most have kids.. boys... aged 18-24 :-)

It's all about eBay

[realmolo]

I work for a cable ISP in a town populated with mostly older people (retirement age and up). And I swear, they ALL buy/sell stuff on eBay. They all bought digital cameras to take pictures of the stuff they are selling on eBay. They all upgraded from dial-up so they could bid faster on eBay. In fact, retired people dig eBay so much, I'd bet that many of them would trade their Social Security and Medicare for high buyer/seller ratings. We could cut the federal deficit by billions! So, that's my platform. Vote realmolo in 2004. Contributions accepted via PayPal.

They say statistics are like bikinis:

[Kiyooka]

What they reveal are suggestive.

What they hide are critical.

Re:Quite a Jump

[spun]

Hmm, it is a big thing. I googled 'history of the telephone' and read a bit from some sites. Bell invented the telephone in 1875 and patented it in early 1876. Telephone usage didn't begin to get big until the late 1890s, and by 1910, there were over a million telephone users hooked into the Bell system. Bell had a clear cut patent, but he had to spend a lot of time and resources defending it in court. The Internet was developed by the US Defense Agency, then built up by Acedemia, then adopted by Business and developed in a very competetive, free market style. I have absolutely no idea the point I am trying to make.

Oh, yeah. These things always go in S curves. Curve starts out flat, as initial research is done and infrastructure is built up. Curve starts to vear up as early adopters jump on board. Once everyone knows it's a good thing, the curve goes nearly verticle for a while, then it tapers off once it hits 80-90 percent adoption. So don't forget all the initial ARPANET stuff in your timeline, which started in 1969. And it means the Internet has almost reached maturity here in America. Anyone have usage numbers for other countries?