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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?

#201

Post by ChrisRR »

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 completely agree. My anxiety has been so much better since I stopped reading the news, facebook and twitter.

I don't really need a constant drip feed of all the terrible things going on in the world. Most of it doesn't affect me, and only serves to make me feel worse about humanity

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

#202

Post by throwawgler87 »

Nitpick: In the table where they break it down by category, it seems implied what percentage of each demographic says they don't use the internet (e.g. 25% of people 65+), with no mention of what fraction of non-internet-users are 65+. Both numbers would be interesting!

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

#203

Post by psychiatrist24 »

ornornor wrote: post #187
amelius wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 civ…

I don't trust the news, but on FB and Twitter I can select my own sources. Doesn't mean I automatically trust them, but at least I can get a multitude of perspectives and background information that the news omits.

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

#204

Post by noir_lord »

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…

There are two distinct groups with some overlap.

There is the "social media is the internet" group and the "social media is part of the internet" group.

I'm in the latter and happier for it, I have a facebook account (because of Oculus gah!) with no friends, no activity and I never check it and I have a twitter account which follows a handful of programmers and a lot of project accounts.

It's strange because my mum is heavily in the former group so when we talk her worldview is shaped by Facebook to an uncanny degree - it's worrying how much so.

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

#205

Post by noir_lord »

hunter-gatherer wrote: post #104
xkeysc0re wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 think also for a lot of people, social media is the internet and almost inextricably so. I'm glad you've posted this. I've been observing this for a long while, and it drives me crazy. My spouse (30) is actually a good example of this. For most people smart phones and tablets aren't the "super computers in people's pockets" often touted on forums like these. They are really simply just gateways to social media. I…

Not you, I have the same problem with my mum - to her at this point Facebook and YouTube are the internet.

She is entirely almost a passive consumer of what they algorithmically feed her - it also shapes her worldview in some weird ways - some of her personality change is just part of getting older I'm sure but you can almost spot the change when she starts discussing something that she saw on Facebook.

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

#206

Post by TeMPOraL »

Gene_Parmesan wrote: post #151
marlor wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting rid of “newstainment” and 24-hour news programs significantly improved the quality and breadth of the news I consume. By just reading a quality daily newspaper and a couple of newsmagazines, I’m better informed than when I was a news junkie with cable news on in the background and news websites refreshing on my phone. “Breaking news” is broken. Print media, especially weekly newsmagazines, have the luxury of…

(This is not addressed directly at you, parent commenter, these are just general thoughts.) I studied journalism in undergrad, and I have never understood why people are so drawn to watch these national 24hr 'news' channels. During a major crisis, sure, but day in and day out? I just don't get it. There just isn't that much that happens at a non-personal level (personal meaning self-, family-, friend-, work-oriented)…

> They try to get you to buy into them by convincing you it's important to "stay informed," but never really explain why.

The common explanation you hear everywhere, even here on HN, is that citizens "staying informed" is the key to an effective democracy. While it may be true in the abstract, using this as an argument for 24h news - or even daily news - is quietly omitting the fact that these news sources provide negative information value. Your worldview becomes less accurate, not more. Widespread addiction to breaking news is thus creating a less effective democracy.

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

#208

Post by [deleted] »

kilroy123 wrote: post #185
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?

[deleted]

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

#209

Post by tomjen3 »

_delirium wrote: post #95
dhosek wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 found I had to get rid of a decent portion of the news too, and news-adjacent comedy shows like Colbert. It's not enough to personally not read FB/Twitter, since they have gotten so integrated into mainstream media. Maybe 10 years ago you could just ignore social media, but by 2018 (when I started making an effort to avoid it), you could end up seeing thousands of tweets without ever using twitter yourself, if you…

I once did an exercise where I went over every single news article on the front page of my prefered online paper and asked myself if that was relevant to me and my life.

The answer was no to everything single one. That was pre-covid, and sometimes the news are relevant, but you can mostly do a quick checkup once a week. Prefer something in text form that you can scan over.

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