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

pewresearch.org

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

#181

Post by amelius »

ornornor wrote: post #131
slg wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life is certainly less stressful if you ignore all the terrible things... unless a terrible thing happens to you and everyone ignores you.

Otoh 99% (exaggeration for emphasis but not that far off if you think about it) of what happens in the “news” is totally irrelevant to you and your life beyond the initial outrage it provokes. You have virtually no impact on preventing or influencing the event and it has no impact on you whatsoever. War in Africa again? It’s sad to think about and outrageous how some scummy warlords terrorize the local population, bu…

> 99% (...) of what happens in the “news” is totally irrelevant to you and your life beyond the initial outrage it provokes.

Just like voting has almost zero effect. However, is not voting wise?

In what direction would society move if nobody watched the news?

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

#182

Post by 867-5309 »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #179
SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which print media do you recommend?

not OP but I've had a long running subscription to The Economist since the early 90ies. One of my favorite sections usually glossed over by everyone I know (but I'm weird) is the quality from "Letters to the Editor" that are incredibly well selected and often hilarious when checked with the original piece that they are referring to. The Letters are not my causa primera for reading it, but if something so mundane is d…

>had a long running subscription to The Economist

>their Tech section ... stands out among the rest

this is some hardcore Gell Mann sorcery right here

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

#183

Post by lotsofpulp »

wxnx wrote: post #73

A significant portion of the US is illiterate [1]. One might assume that being illiterate affects internet usage. Not quite as romantic as neo-Luddism, or even making a conscious choice not to expose oneself to potentially problematic patterns of communication. [1] https://nces.ed.gov/datapoints/2019179.asp

I sometimes wonder how much illiteracy or lack of vocabulary and comprehension skills has to do with popularity of Instagram and tiktok and the videos that people make of themselves talking to the camera.

Also for people only fluent in languages that aren’t popular online. My parents aren’t able to parse most online English discussion, and I’m sure it’s tiring to try to understand just like it would be if I tried a deep conversation in their language, so they like WhatsApp video forwards and YouTube. Unfortunately, that content is mostly garbage.

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

#184

Post by MrGilbert »

dhosek wrote: post #93
justapassenger wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of what you’re describing can be attributed to lack of internet. But other part is just being an outsider that doesn’t really care that much (and I mean that in totally non offensive way - it’s just a benefit of being an outsider). Outrage existed long before internet. Daily tv news, newspapers, gossips at work, coworker with totally opposite world view, etc, were all great sources of outrage. At smaller scale,…

My outrage quotient has dropped significantly in the two and a half months since I deleted facebook and twitter. Just removing those two things from my life has made a measurable improvement in my quality of life.

I deleted my facebook account some years ago. Also, I set my Twitter account to private. I use it to be connected to some people, and read their stuff. I'm pretty happy.

Also, I have a second account for "open" discussions and work-related stuff that I barely use. It would be awesome if one could set certain tweets in a locked account to "visible for everyone".

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

#185

Post by kilroy123 »

wxnx wrote: post #73

A significant portion of the US is illiterate [1]. One might assume that being illiterate affects internet usage. Not quite as romantic as neo-Luddism, or even making a conscious choice not to expose oneself to potentially problematic patterns of communication. [1] https://nces.ed.gov/datapoints/2019179.asp

How is it so high? Are these people immigrants from developing nations or something?

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

#186

Post by qilo »

samatman wrote: post #19

7% of Americans say they don't use the Internet when polled . Some unknown percentage of that is the Lizardman's Constant[0], some of them mean "not much", plenty of them use the map on their phone and don't think that's "using the Internet", probably a decent amount who use Facebook to look at pictures of their grandkids but figure they aren't using the Internet because they don't own a computer (if you told them a…

Some data points from Indonesia and Nigeria:

But a closer look at the data shows that 11% of Indonesians who said they used Facebook also said they did not use the internet. In Nigeria, 9% of Facebook users said they do not use the internet.

https://qz.com/333313/milliions-of-facebook-users-have-no-id...

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

#187

Post by ornornor »

amelius wrote: post #181
ornornor wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Otoh 99% (exaggeration for emphasis but not that far off if you think about it) of what happens in the “news” is totally irrelevant to you and your life beyond the initial outrage it provokes. You have virtually no impact on preventing or influencing the event and it has no impact on you whatsoever. War in Africa again? It’s sad to think about and outrageous how some scummy warlords terrorize the local population, bu…

> 99% (...) of what happens in the “news” is totally irrelevant to you and your life beyond the initial outrage it provokes. Just like voting has almost zero effect. However, is not voting wise? In what direction would society move if nobody watched the news?

That's assuming you can trust the news to be impartial and unbiased which they rarely are, because most media is owned by a few oligarchs or entities who have a specific agenda to push.

As for voting, I find these tools that ask you questions and tell you which candidates/parties best match your beliefs to be enough to know how to cast my vote. Not that it really matters, as you've said but it still lets me do my civic duty without the years of stress and anxiety in-between elections and during the elected's mandate. I'll leave it up to other to get needlessly outraged by following the news.

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

#189

Post by kilroy123 »

_rpd wrote: post #38

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.

I have several very elderly relatives and many of them never use a computer or internet. So I'm not too surprised by this.

However, my grandpa is 93 and uses his iPad, goes on Facebook, and watches YouTube all day. So it's definitely not all of them.

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