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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?

#281

Post by marlor »

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #137
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…

Which print media do you recommend?

The Economist is the gold standard, with unbiased, quality writing. Brilliant all round. However, it’s expensive (especially if you prefer print over digital). I subscribe on and off.

I also really like Foreign Policy. Despite its name, it’s not really a specialist publication, just a general overview of global current affairs with a bit of a policy focus.

The Guardian Weekly has great international coverage. Its editorial stance is also less overt than it once was (far more measured than the website). There are still occasional stories and writers that make my eyes roll, but it also covers really interesting global stories I don’t find anywhere else.

My daily newspaper is the Sydney Morning Herald. I’ve been based in Australia since travel restrictions hit, and I’m really happy with the paper. It seems to be just as good as it was a decade ago when I was last based here.

Contrary to popular opinion, there’s plenty of quality print journalism out there.

You just need to read an individual paper for a while to internalise the house style and (with the notable exception of The Economist) get to know the individual predilections of each journalist. That level of engagement with the paper and its writers is not something you get from skimming Google News, but I really feel it’s at the heart of getting the most from journalism.

Just buy a particular paper or newsmagazine for a month or two, and see if it’s for you. One local/national and one with a global focus is all you need. If you find them, you’ll hopefully be set for years.

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

#282

Post by randomdata »

donw wrote: post #142
randomdata wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great example of using the device. It would be interesting to know if your post here had you re-evaluating your face-to-face persona or if it validated your status quo for you, but as we've never met face-to-face before to see how you may or may have not changed in such a setting I guess I have no way of finding out for sure.

Nah, I'm pretty much the same online as I am in person. Having to support multiple personalities is just too much work. Moreover, the whole "different person online" thing reminds me pretty strongly of one of the more common patterns in abusive relationships -- in that the abuser behaves very differently depending on the situation. Never want to walk an inch down that road. That said, online, nuance and tone don't co…

One should never read into tone. It is virtually impossible to correctly interpret.

This is more about content, testing theories that you are skeptical of but the scientific method calls for experimentation regardless. If you are not willing to conduct studies on your mental state, you have not validated it. Allowing yourself to have a potentially inconsistent mental state is not logical.

Because the face-to-face public have an irrational fear of science, however, one has to be protective of the ideas their face-to-face persona is willing to express. Online communication is where the guard is let down.

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

#283

Post by dr-detroit »

lmm wrote: post #216
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.

Did you try just... not following the outrage parts? Not getting outraged? If you want to spend more time connecting with people you care about, getting rid of facebook feels like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

What other parts are there? The corporate shilling? The shameless sex app aspect? Or just the fact that ABC news reported faceblog is just a CIA utility for tracking simpletons?

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

#285

Post by psds2 »

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?

From the https://nces.ed.gov/datapoints/2019179.asp link - "U.S.-born adults make up two-thirds of adults with low levels of English literacy skills in the United States."

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

#287

Post by neallindsay »

protomyth wrote: post #276
hehetrthrthrjn wrote: post #66

Roughly speaking: it's the old, the poor, the uneducated, and the rural. That's not terribly surprising.

I'm betting a lot of rural folks have better internet than those in Silicon Valley. Given I live and work among the poor, rural, and forgotten and the internet (Facebook, Netflix) is being used all the time, I doubt the geography aspect. I do want to see this studies raw questions/ data gathering.

There are definitely rural areas that have excellent internet service available. I grew up in a small town that happened to be a test market for Time Warner cable internet (RoadRunner) when it came out in the 1990s.

However, there's rural and there's rural. Some people live places where the cable company would have to run miles of copper just to service a single house. If you're living so far out and also poor, you probably can't afford to tether to your cell phone either.

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

#288

Post by selimthegrim »

dagw wrote: post #212
tovej wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, Europe has missed out on the last three generations of technology? I live in Europe and have visited the US. My impression has been the opposite. When I was visiting (5 years ago): - The trains didn't work - People printed out google maps instructions instead of using a network connection because data connections were bad/expensive - I had to sign my name to pay with a card at gas stations. I couldn't use…

After all, Germany makes all the cars that end up in the US. I just pulled up a list of the top 25 selling cars in the US and there are 0 German brands on that list. Plus most of the 'German' cars sold in the US are also made in the US.

I don't think VW ever broke 1m cars a year here, off the top of my head.

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

#289

Post by dagw »

selimthegrim wrote: post #288
dagw wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After all, Germany makes all the cars that end up in the US. I just pulled up a list of the top 25 selling cars in the US and there are 0 German brands on that list. Plus most of the 'German' cars sold in the US are also made in the US.

I don't think VW ever broke 1m cars a year here, off the top of my head.

According to this: https://www.goodcarbadcar.net/volkswagen-us-sales-figures/

they've never broken 500k (at least going back to 2005).

edit: Volkswagen Group sell in the 500k-650k cars range

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

#290

Post by LoLFactor »

re-actor wrote: post #279
LoLFactor wrote: post #274

It's funny how so many people came here to complain about the state of the internet... on the internet. Maybe it's just me and I don't get it, but if you don't want to be on the internet anymore, just yank the ethernet cable out of your computer and cancel your plan. One less bill to pay, right? Coming here to complain and not seeing the ridiculousness in it makes me think some of the people in this thread need to ta…

For most people here, getting rid of the internet would also mean changing careers to one of the few remaining things you can do professionally without using the internet. "You criticize thing yet you also use it, how curious" is such a banal take it's literally a meme.

My apologies for the banality. The completely obvious truth that internet is a necessity in 2021 somehow escaped me... Or maybe it didn't and that was the whole point.

Given that these people are here, they are obviously engaging in internet usage that IS NOT part of their job (I've yet to see a job posting where reading HN is a requirement). Nobody is pushing anybody to use certain parts of the internet. Don't like some parts? Don't use them. Don't like any parts of it? Then yeah, yank the cable out and enjoy... or endure, whatever the case may be. Be it career or anything else that's stopping you from yanking the cable, well then... it might be that the internet isn't that bad. Not as bad as losing your job, anyway, so WHY COMPLAIN?

Using the internet strictly for utilitarian purposes is possible. Do that and then use the rest of your time to go out with your buddies. Don't have any? That might just be because (and this was my second point) you're a negative and possibly toxic person. The kind people don't want to be around and that MAKE THE INTERNET A LESS APPEALING PLACE.

Did I adequately rephrase my take to be less banal?

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