by Associated Press
NEW YORK - The U.S. online population has hit an all-time high: 73 percent of adults, or 147 million, now use the Internet.
The figures represent an increase from 66 percent, or 133 million adults, in January 2005, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project.
But only 42 percent of all adults, or 84 million, have the home high-speed connections important for viewing video and treating the Internet as an always-on reference. Looking only at home Internet users, 62 percent have broadband.
In a report Wednesday, Pew noted that Internet use still varies with age and income.
Eighty-eight percent of adults under 30 go online, compared with 32 percent for those age 65 and older.
Only 53 percent of adults in households earning less than $30,000 a year use the Internet, compared with 91 percent in households with annual income exceeding $75,000.
The telephone-based survey of 4,001 adults, conducted Feb. 15-April 6, has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060426/ap_ ... pulation_1
Interesting news story, if oddly negative. 62% of internet users now use broadband, which is a huge and growing number so I don't know why the article spins it negatively, but ah well. Pretty cool that so many use the internet, and that it is spreading to include lower income groups as well.
Something I've always wondered here though are how many of active users on YWS are American? I'm not sure if Americans constitute even a slight majority of active YWS members (seems that there's a large number of active users from UK and Canada). But I guess pretty much everyone here lives in a country that at one time or another was ruled by England (only Arvandor from Macedonia comes to mind as the exception... everyone else is from United States, Canada, UK, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, or India).
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