5 Percent Of Americans Still Don’t Think This Internet Thing Will Take Off

There are still about 16 million people in America who find the Internet completely useless.

A new Pew Internet poll of “Who’s Not Online and Why” proves more than ever that the Internet is here to stay, but there are still more than a few holdouts. About 5 percent of Americans still think that the Internet is completely irrelevant and will never catch on.

Sure, 5 percent isn’t that much, but there are a handful of other interesting findings from the poll. For instance, 15 percent of American adults aren’t online at all, and within that population, a third give “the Internet is uninteresting” as their reason.

Another third of that 15 percent just say that they can’t figure it out, that it’s too difficult to navigate, or that they are physically limited in some way. Other reasons included a fear of viruses, spam or identity theft.

Another group are actually still unable to afford Internet access.

Once again, Internet usage has been shown to correlate strongly with age, education and income. Nearly half of Americans age 65 and older said they don’t use the internet, and older groups make up 49 percent of non-Internet users overall.

Chances of those 5 percent ever signing up for the Internet are slim, as well. Per Pew:

Overall, most adults who do not use the internet or email do not express a strong desire to go online in the future: just 8% of offline adults say they would like to start using the internet or email, while 92% say they are not interested. We also offline adults whether they would need assistance going online if they did wish to do so, and found that only 17% of all non-internet users say they would be able to start using the internet on their own, while 63% say they would need assistance.

I’d ask whether or not you use the Internet to close, but how else would you be reading this?

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