15% of Americans still do not use internet – Pew

In fact, the breakdown of Internet users compared to non-users seems to reflect the Americans who would have those kinds of concerns. While we may not like the monthly bills, like our phones and electricity, we can’t imagine living without it.

While this number still appears high, Pew notes in its research that compared to 2000 when the proportion was 86 per cent, the number of elderly individuals online has doubled. While that’s down from roughly half in 2000, the rate has changed little in the past three years, as said by Pew. As you might expect they skew older.

Some 15 percent of American adults are not using the Internet – a figure which has not changed over the past two years, researchers said Tuesday.

But cost is a big factor too. Data also reveals that a quarter of households earning less than $30,000 a year aren’t online. And among those without a high school diploma, the share not using the internet dropped from 81% to 33% in the same time period. In other surveys, many people have said they’d sooner give up TV, cars and even sex before they’d give up the Internet. Making the internet wireless and free would go a long way toward bringing minorities online.

Finally, location and ethnicity factor in, as stated by Pew’s results. Among those, senior citizens are most likely to avoid the web with four in 10 adults age 65 or older doing just that. A third of non-internet users (34%) did not go online because they had no interest in doing so or did not think the internet was relevant to their lives. Another 32 percent said that using the Internet was too hard to use, with 8 percent saying that they were “too old to learn”. That year, almost half (48%) of American adults did not use the internet.

Rural Americans are about twice as likely as those who live in urban or suburban settings to never use the internet. Cost was also a barrier for some adults who were offline – 19% cited the expense of internet service or owning a computer.

Pew’s latest research is based on a series of three polls conducted in 2015 that questioned 5,005 people in the US.