Four Out of Five Adults Now Use the Internet

ROCHESTER, N.Y. – November 17, 2008 – In 1995, when The Harris Poll® began measuring online activity, less than 18 million adults used the Internet in their homes, offices, schools, libraries or other locations. Now, thirteen years, later, fully 184 million adults are online.

The proportion of adults online trebled between 1995 (9%) and 1997 (30%), and kept on climbing rapidly to 63% in 2000. Since then growth has been slower, reading 73% in 2004 and 81% now.

These are some of the results of The Harris Poll, a new nationwide survey of 2,020 U.S. adults surveyed by telephone between October 16 and 20, 2008 and October 30 and November 2, 2008 by Harris Interactive^®.

While most people (75%), and almost all those who use the Internet, use it at home, more than two out of five adults (43%) go online at work and a third (32%) do so at other locations (schools, cybercafés, libraries, etc.)

Until 2002, Internet users spent an average of seven or eight hours online per week. That has increased to nine hours in 2005, eleven hours in 2007 and to fully fourteen hours in this new survey.

Before 1998, less than half of the people who used computers also used the Internet. Over the last ten years, that has increased steadily. Today only two percent of computer users do not go online.

In the early days of the Internet revolution, most of those online were young and well-educated. As the online population has grown it has come to look more and more like the population of the country. Internet penetration is still somewhat lower among people over 65, people who never went to college and people with household incomes of less than $25,000, but large majorities of all of these demographic groups are now online.

The internet revolution continues. The online population continues to grow and to use the Internet for more hours than ever before. Initially the Internet was used to do things we did before but to do them better, faster or cheaper. Now it is increasingly being used to so new things we could not do before which were prohibitively expensive or difficult.

As Roy Amara once said of the growth of new technologies, "There is a tendency to overestimate their short-term impact and to underestimate long-term impact." The Internet now touches many parts of our lives. With each new year we use it, and depend on it more for communication, information, work, shopping, and entertainment.

In the election, Barack Obama and the Democrats used the Internet to drive their campaign, to communicate with many millions of people, to raise unprecedented amounts of money and to motivate and turn out their supporters. There is now talk of using these systems to enable the president-elect and his administration to communicate directly with the public and by-pass the traditional media.

We may still be at the dawn of the age of the Internet.

"At home, do you personally use a computer to access the Internet/World Wide Web?"

"At work, do you personally use a computer to access the Internet/World Wide Web?"

"At another location, do you personally use a computer to access the Internet/World Wide Web?"

"Excluding email, how many hours per week, on average, do you typically spend on the Internet or World Wide Web?"

Base: All adults

Note: N/A means "not asked"

"Do you personally use a computer at home, work or another location?"

"At home, do you personally use a computer to access the Internet/World Wide Web?"

"At work, do you personally use a computer to access the Internet/World Wide Web?"

"At another location, do you personally use a computer to access the Internet/World Wide Web?"

Base: All adults

Notes:

1. All samples of 2,000 or more adults, conducted by telephone.

2. "Are Online" includes all adults who use Internet from home, office, school, library or other location.

* Estimated from other sources.

"At home, do you personally use a computer to Access the Internet/World Wide Web?"

"At work, do you personally use a computer to access the Internet/World Wide Web?"

"At another location, do you personally use a computer to access the Internet/World Wide Web?"

Base: All adults

*Based on data from the March 2008 U.S. Current Population Survey

"At home, do you personally use a computer to Access the Internet/World Wide Web?"

"At work, do you personally use a computer to access the Internet/World Wide Web?"

"At another location, do you personally use a computer to access the Internet/World Wide Web?"

Base: All adults

*Based on July 2007 U.S. Census estimate released January 2008 (227,700,000 total adults aged 18 or over)

The Harris Poll^® was conducted by telephone within the United States in October 2008 (October 16 and 20, 2008) and October 2008 (October 30 and November 2, 2008) among 2,020 adults (aged 18 and over). Figures for age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, region, number of adults in the household, size of place (urbanicity) and number of phone lines in the household were weighted where necessary to bring them into line with their actual proportions in the population.

All sample surveys and polls, whether or not they use probability sampling, are subject to multiple sources of error which are most often not possible to quantify or estimate, including sampling error, coverage error, error associated with nonresponse, error associated with question wording and response options, and post-survey weighting and adjustments. Therefore, Harris Interactive avoids the words "margin of error" as they are misleading. All that can be calculated are different possible sampling errors with different probabilities for pure, unweighted, random samples with 100% response rates. These are only theoretical because no published polls come close to this ideal.

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