In less than two weeks, the internet will turn 25 years old -- to say say it has been a success would be an understatement. It is now used by a huge majority of Americans (and in other countries as well). Here's how the Pew Research Center recounts the birth of the internet:Sir Tim Berners-Lee wrote a paper on March 12, 1989 proposing an “information management” system that became the conceptual and architectural structure for the Web. He eventually released the code for his system—for free—to the world on Christmas Day in 1990. It became a milestone in easing the way for ordinary people to access documents and interact over a network of computers called the internet—a system that linked computers and that had been around for years. The Web became especially appealing after Web browsers were perfected in the early 1990s to facilitate graphical displays of pages on those linked computers.
In 1995, only about 14% of the population in the United States were users of the internet. Today internet usage has exploded to include 87% of the population -- a phenomenal growth. And as the chart below shows, there is no group in our society that does not have a majority using the internet in 2014.
It is interesting that some demographic differences have a fairly wide gap in internet use, while others don't. It turns out that where a person lives (urban, suburban, rural) doesn't affect internet usage, and neither does race or ethnicity and sex. But other factors do matter. Those making over $75,000 a year have a much larger internet usage than those making under $30,000 a year (a difference of about 22 points). College graduates also have a significantly higher internet usage than those with a high school diploma or less (a 21 point difference).But the biggest difference comes in the different age groups. Those 65 and over, a group that grew up before the internet was invented, has significantly less internet usage than the between 18 and 29 years old group (the first group to grow up with the internet being a reality). There is a 40 point difference between these two groups.
This Pew Research Center survey was done between January 9th and 12th of this year of 1,006 nationwide adults, and has a margin of error of about 3.5 points.
