With its 25th birthday coming up in March, the internet is the most popular millennial in America.
New data from the Pew Research Internet Project illustrates America’s embrace of – and increasing reliance on – the internet since the 1990s. More than half of Americans (53%) admit they would find the internet “very hard” to give up, compared with 38% who thought so in 2006. When you compare those numbers to the measly 28% who feel this way about landline telephones, it shows a significant shift in preference toward different types of communication technologies.
What’s interesting about the chart above is that relatively few people (11%) feel like giving up social media would be difficult, even though a Pew study from last year showed that 42% of Americans access multiple social networking platforms.
But the survey also shows that Americans may still view participating in social media, accessing the internet and using email as entirely different experiences. That’s an interesting distinction, if not an entirely new one. For example, when people talk about “digital detoxing”, the internet as a means of consuming information isn’t on the receiving end of the vitriol – just the parts of it that serve as a means to communicate with others. But, paradoxically, communicating with others is what Americans appear to enjoy most about the internet.
America, don’t believe all of the bad headlines you read about the internet ruining our lives, making us dumber and destroying our social relationships. We couldn’t live without it if we tried.
Source: theguardian
