7% of Americans don’t use the internet (really?)

Try living someplace where satellite internet service is the only internet available and you'd believe it even for non-elderly people. I lived in a place like that for just a couple months and it seemed otherworldly. It's only a little faster than dial-up was decades ago.

What’s the population of above 80s?

My mom is in her 70s & is 1 of these anti-internet folks.

She watches Fox News all day.

Her best friend is in her 80s & also is anti-internet as well as her only sibling.

All republicans.

Most people have smartphones and public spaces like libraries have internet access

Bless these people!

This 7% are also the ones who donate to Dump and then get grifted and stolen from.

Idiots.

My elderly stepfather is one of the 7%. He's not a deplorable, just someone who didn't need to keep up with tech and wasn't able to grasp it when he finally tried to learn and gave up, embarrassed. He lives a fine life without it, but it taught me to keep up with whatever comes along so that I'm not one day hopelessly baffled.

15 percent of Americans are over 65 years old.

97 percent of the United States is rural land. A lot of that land doesn't have broadband cables, which have to be laid down physically, and a lot of rural land is not only not industrialized, but a lot is terrain so rough or rocky or hilly that it's not really feasible to put in broadband cables.

Some areas, like parts of Montana, don't even have cellular access because even cell signals require physical transmitters, and what phone company is going to pay to install and maintain cell towers on rocky mountainsides so that 100 people can have phone access?

10.5 percent of American people are impoverished and literally all the money they can get their hands on has to pay for housing, food and clothing. Only bare necessities.

Seven percent without Internet access is pretty good, all things considered.

Are they counting accessing the internet via mobile phones in the 93%?

These people are certainly much happier than the frustrated and bitter DLers who spend their time insulting all those who disagree with them of being: racist / nazis / boris.

The whole of Humanity has lived without the Internet for centuries and these 7% aren't weird or Trumpers or any of some dumbasses here are calling them. They are normal people who just don t want Internet. It's not an obligation.

Maybe they still read books unlike some people on the Internets....

My dad is 73 and he has always used the Internet, but he refused to buy anything online until two years ago and he refused to use a smart phone until this past year. My mom passed away three years ago and he has too much time alone now and I think he only gave in to getting a smart phone as a distraction. He still almost never texts. He just doesn't like it.

He worked for DoD all his career and was made into a computer programmer in the early 70s, and he used the early Internet DoD developed. And still, it's just not his go-to for information, communication or entertainment. He belongs to an earlier generation that prefers face-to-face or at least voice-based interactions and reading books.

Given all this, I can easily imagine that people over 80 and especially people over 90 would choose to live in a world without the Internet.

For some people--especially poor people in rural areas--the Internet is inaccessible, and for others, it's just not part of their world by choice.

R10 One of my aunts who has the brain of an 8 year old doesn't have the internet and I doubt she could cope with it. She can't even operate a microwave oven.

I think they are either people too old to bother and don't need do or people who don't have the mental capacity.

There are so many companies and Government agencies pushing us onto the fucking internet and I personally try to resist as much as possible which drives them crazy.

R13 Totally agree with you

R7 - my mom is the same way. We've bought her countless computers - it never stuck and she would just get pissed off at computers. Bizarre - because she used to know how to do spreadsheets in Lotus 1, 2, 3.

She always expected me or my brother to teach her - and we tried - but it is 99% user trial and error. She just didn't put in the time and still won't.

Life would be a LOT easier if my mom could even use a god damn smart phone to make a call!

As it's a survey of Americans, I'm guessing 6% didn't understand the question. While taking an online survey.

21 percent of adults in the US are illiterate or functionally illiterate.

Considering that, only nine percent not having access to the Internet is remarkable.

How many of them are DLers?

How many people on DL have been to a library in the past year? I think that would be a telling statistic.

[quote]How many people on DL have been to a library in the past year? I think that would be a telling statistic.

How would that be a telling statistic? Only of a certain type reader, for example the NPR-donor tote-toting reader who feels good about not buying books and not buying plastic bags (but hey, those $7 coffees are so good!)

People go the library for fuck all reasons: to read books, to look for a job, to do online research, to get a dick sucked. I'm not sure that that makes them superior or inferior to people who have a library at home, or read books in digital format, or buy from their preferred bookseller, or do their dick sucking in their privacy of their own premises.

I don't know how telling library membership/usage rates are anymore. We're in a culture now in which a lot of us are much more likely to buy books than to borrow them for various reasons--the fetishizing of book ownership, the habit of just buying everything we want when we want it these days than in the past, the convenience of clicking "add to cart" on Amazon and books showing up at the door within a day, the relative inconvenience of venturing out to a book store.

There are also avid readers like me who tend to read more obscure material that a library would be less likely to carry. Even when I was a kid, I was very interested in marine science and ichthyology, and my local library had only the most elementary, cursory books. I was really frustrated because all I had at home were two encyclopedias that effectively just defined things, I didn't have my own money to buy books I wanted to buy from bookstores, and we didn't get home Internet until I was 17 (1995), and even then information on the Internet was spare. I got most of the information I wanted from magazines.

When I was in middle school, my goldfish outgrew its 20-gallon fish tank and my parents let me build a small pond in the backyard. It looked like a grave plot at first--a rectangle with landscape timbers as a frame--and so I started adding plants around it to soften the edges and make it look like less of an eyesore. I ended up getting really into plants and gardening, as well. And again, the library had little to offer besides the most basic of books.

I became pretty disappointed in library offerings based on those experiences and I sort of forgot that they existed for public lending even though one of my good friends from grad school worked in the National Geographic library. It just sort of became a disconnect for me. My dad reads a lot, the sorts of best-seller books that libraries are more apt to procure, and we always buy him books for birthdays, Christmas, etc., and he donates them to the library. So I actually came to think of libraries as places to donate books more than to get them.

I think libraries are incredible resources especially for children and for people who read a lot of popular, best-selling books because those are always readily available. They can also be good for researching information academically, but while university libraries that participate in lending programs with other universities are treasure troves of deep knowledge, my experience with public community libraries is that they're great for people who love popular fiction, or who want to read classic literature, or who want basic information about a broad array of topics, but they tend to lack depth if your reading interests are, for example, the arts and sciences, and you read beyond elementary level. I have an MFA in creative writing and an undergraduate degree in English and I don't use a community library just because my experience has been that public libraries don't have the sort of information I consume. If I ever got into the habit of reading popular novels the way I watch popular TV series, then I would definitely use a library.

R20 by your hysterical reaction to a simple question, I'm guessing that you either have not been to a library in the past year, or are a flaming drama queen.

R20 is so crude.

My parents, in their 80’s, never used the internet

Even fucking Jitterbug is a smart phone.

I have two uncles in their late 70s who do not use the internet at all, nor do they have smartphones. There are some elderly people who just never had any interest in the internet, and obviously they never had to use it in their careers.

I knew more people who didn’t have VCRs in the 80s and 90s.

Yes they are R9, which ... to me doesn't really seem "the internet" so maybe why the figure is so high. I would have expected a lower number.

Older people who just don't want to bother. Those who can't afford (or can't get) broadband (can you still buy dialup?). People incarcerated (I'm sure they have limited access but do they actually use it?).

93% penetration puts the US just outside top 10 for internet penetration.

#1 UAE at 99% and #10 Germany at 94%.

All have much smaller populations and are geographically much smaller, making rollout of wired and cellular towers a LOT easier.

My elderly father was absolutely against even a cell phone.

Finally, we forced him to get a simple one so we could keep tabs on him.

He took to it like a duck to water and calls his friends all the time

I suspect a higher number of Dataloungers only use the internet to access this site.

And maybe Pornhub.

R31, even DL and Pornhub are "the internet"

Is this the same % of people that hold up lines at the bank because they refuse to pay their bills online?

Separately*

My 81-year-old mother won't use a cell phone, much less a computer. Of course, if there's anything she needs to find out that's only online, guess who she calls? You're right -- me.

How large are the Amish and Mennonite populations again?

[quote]Is this the same % of people that hold up lines at the bank because they refuse to pay their bills online?

And the ones who pay in cash (counting out their bills and change) or write checks in stores.

[quote] How many people on DL have been to a library in the past year? I

I'm using my library membership more than ever during covid -- my city's library system has expanded online services, and it's better than ever for checking out e-books on Overdrive.

Newsflash for OP: Poor people exist. Yes, smart phones are everywhere, but data plans and home Wifi are still inconceivable luxuries for many. Also, 7% is not that shocking when you consider the elderly who've resisted or just not interacted with this technology.

r35 I wrote about my elderly uncles above. They call their respective children (my cousins) to "look things up" for them, or anytime they need to register for something or do any other "official" things online. When my cousins aren't available, they call me or my brother. We relay the information to them over the phone. It's ridiculous, but they're both way too old to change.

R36? I've seen Amish kids on cellphones. Really.

They're all black.

My 67-year old step-mom doesn't use the internet at all. I showed her a realtor.com house she wanted to see and all she needed to do was press the right arrow to see the other pics. A few minutes later she called me in and said, "I don't think this is where I'm supposed to be" and she had somehow opened up my File Explorer, navigated to my pictures area and there were a bunch of pics of naked guys with hardons on the screen! I have no idea how she did that.

Worse, 19% of Americans can't read.

Mobile phone plans in the U.S. from $10 and less

R35 I know that routine!

It never ends....

We still have a population of old people who read newspapers, pay in cash and checks and correspond via the mail. It's no surprise they wouldn't want to have anything to do with the internet. They've been retired for many years so they never had to use the internet for work.

[quote] and correspond via the mail.

I still send Christmas cards every year, and birthday cards to family and close friends.

People who send "Christmas emails" or "birthday text messages" are basically trash, with the manners of dungheap.

OP, you can’t do shit without having access to a computer now. You’d have to be homeless.

[quote] Also, 7% is not that shocking when you consider the elderly who've resisted or just not interacted with this technology.

Boomers are the elderly. They’ve used computers.

All boomers have used computers? Every last one? Really?

And that means they all use the internet, because they might've opened an email once.

All elderly are boomers? There are 85 year old boomers?

Really?

What is with the fucking stupidity here on every thread lately?

I know some older Boomers who do not use the internet.

Some older Boomer men don't use the internet because their wives do it for them. It's very much an old-fashioned mindset.

[quote] Some older Boomer men don't use the internet

It was the "old Boomer men" who invented the internet, you back talking young whippersnapper! Don't sass your elders.

And if my aunt had a dick she would be my uncle r54. WTF does that have to do with anything?

Gen Xers did much of the work to develop and nurture the Internet. Most Boomers wanted nothing to do with the Internet when it first hit in the 90s.

R39

In 2009 I met a man in his early 30s from some tiny town in Mississippi called Liberty who had not heard about the internet. I think he had some vague idea of it but he never went online and had a flip phone. He had never had an email account he said. He seemed to travel around the country working construction.

That’s completely believable for anyone who’s ever worked with the public r17

it is entirely possible that any fact that some of us do not find believable is indeed the truth.

Only 7% of Americans even have a brain, so there's that.

I think 7% is being generous r61.

Perhaps they are nomads (ala Nomadland)? Ya know, the kind that shit in a bucket? If Franny has taught us anything, it's there's apparently tons of them out there... roaming the western great plains in their filthy RVs and living in abject squalor.

Part of it is in fact age. My dad of course had a net connection and I'd get all the tech support questions. But the other part is the expense. Hell I pay $130 a month for a net connection. I know we're getting raked over the coals on rates for connectivity too. Because the cost for Comcast to provide the service is only about $10 a month.