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7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

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Re: 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

#31

Post by Sebb767 »

frosted-flakes wrote: post #23
regextegrity wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just turn off your router? Lightbulbs and refrigerators are surprisingly useful

Lightbulbs and refrigerators don't contain electronics. I mean, modern LED lightbulbs contain some primitive electronics, but basic refrigerators do not. By "electronics", the GP means consumer electronic devices like computers, televisions, and smartphones.

> Lightbulbs and refrigerators don't contain electronics.

> By "electronics", the GP means consumer electronic devices like computers,

Have you looked at refrigerators lately? "Smart" ones are very common and even the cheapest ones basically all use electronics to control the temperature and the cooling cycle. Nothing sophisticated, yes, but if LEDs count, these definitely do, as well.

Re: 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

#33

Post by emodendroket »

xkeysc0re wrote: post #30
after_care wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being on social media is only a subset of being online. Plenty of people are not on social media but still watch tv, bank, and get gps directions online.

This is very true. However it is certainly the subset I find myself on the most, ha. I think also for a lot of people, social media is the internet and almost inextricably so. How often do we see on this very site people bemoaning only visiting the same N websites when there's more websites than ever? I think maybe perhaps for me a "read-only" internet would be useful, like a feature phone in a way. Might have to go…

I stopped using Twitter for Lent a couple years ago. After the first few days I stopped thinking to look.

Re: 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

#34

Post by Lammy »

xkeysc0re wrote: post #20

Honestly, I wish I could stop using the internet. I make a lot of things and enjoy sharing them because other people might find them useful. It has often led to wonderful and inspiring conversations. Yet it's obvious there's something very very wrong happening with American culture that began around the time of social media platform consolidation. "Being online" entails a distinct mindset and attitude that is incompa…

I've lost a few very good friends due to this. In-person and online interactions with the same person would vary wildly in tone and emotional intensity, like speaking to two entirely different people. The online interactions always pushed us apart, and the in-person interactions never failed to mend things, but of course those stopped happening over the previous year. I have to assume it's the same way with me toward others.

If I may entertain an idea without necessarily believing it, I would not be surprised if many of the accounts on major social-media sites like Reddit, Twitter, etc are non-human persons tasked with pushing one narrative or another (no specific implication intended/assumed). The "subreddit simulator" powered by GPT-2 bots has more than enough realistic-seeming conversations to make me not immediately reject the idea, since we've all seen how much better GPT-3 is and I assume private entities have even better language models than that: https://old.reddit.com/r/SubSimulatorGPT2/

My additional total-speculation is that all the NSA/FVEY surveillance of our everyday online conversations and interactions would be an excellent training set for such a hypothetical language model.

Re: 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

#35

Post by frosted-flakes »

Sebb767 wrote: post #31
frosted-flakes wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lightbulbs and refrigerators don't contain electronics. I mean, modern LED lightbulbs contain some primitive electronics, but basic refrigerators do not. By "electronics", the GP means consumer electronic devices like computers, televisions, and smartphones.

> Lightbulbs and refrigerators don't contain electronics. > By "electronics", the GP means consumer electronic devices like computers, Have you looked at refrigerators lately? "Smart" ones are very common and even the cheapest ones basically all use electronics to control the temperature and the cooling cycle. Nothing sophisticated, yes, but if LEDs count, these definitely do, as well.

That's why I said basic refrigerators, which still have compressors controlled by an analogue thermostat. Like the kind you find in a typical cheap rental apartment. Refrigerators are one of those appliances that really do not benefit much from "smart" technology. And LEDs don't count; that's my point.

Re: 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

#36

Post by doe88 »

Nowadays, at least in the country I live, if you don't have someone in your family able to complete some tasks for you on the internet i'm not sure it would be possible to not have a modicus of internet access. I also think this is even worse than that, I would add that it becomes very difficult to not have a kind of smartphone with a way to install current apps, more and more some services are available only through apps.

Re: 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

#37

Post by [deleted] »

Sebb767 wrote: post #31
frosted-flakes wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lightbulbs and refrigerators don't contain electronics. I mean, modern LED lightbulbs contain some primitive electronics, but basic refrigerators do not. By "electronics", the GP means consumer electronic devices like computers, televisions, and smartphones.

> Lightbulbs and refrigerators don't contain electronics. > By "electronics", the GP means consumer electronic devices like computers, Have you looked at refrigerators lately? "Smart" ones are very common and even the cheapest ones basically all use electronics to control the temperature and the cooling cycle. Nothing sophisticated, yes, but if LEDs count, these definitely do, as well.

[deleted]

Re: 7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

#38

Post by _rpd »

tl;dr: Internet non-adoption is linked to a number of demographic variables, but is strongly connected to age – with older Americans continuing to be one of the least likely groups to use the internet. Today, 25% of adults ages 65 and older report never going online.
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