34 ms·

11% of Americans don’t use the internet

195 points by kdazzle 8y ago

magduf 8y ago
Old people can use the internet just fine if they want to; my 80-year-old mother happily uses it to buy all kinds of stuff, to pay her bills, to keep up with family on Facebook, etc.
- neverartful 8y ago
  Probably depends on the person. My 79-year-old father has early stages of Alzheimer's/dementia and can't remember the names of his grandkids. I would say that he can't use the internet just fine - even if he wants to.
  - shredprez 8y ago
    Sorry to hear about your father, neverartful; that has to be incredibly difficult. Wishing you peace, for whatever it's worth.
  - trumped 8y ago
    at that point, he probably should be considered internet-disabled (among other things)... as an analogy, would you expect a paraplegic to swim with it's own body? sorry, but that's reality...
    - holygrail111 8y ago
      African paraplegic or Mexican? Pink Floyd wants to know (they bankrolled monty python and the holy grail.)
  - asadlionpk 8y ago
    Sorry to hear that. Stay strong! I had taught my grandma how to use a feature-phone and she was pretty happy with it. Later she was diagnosed with dementia, that phone's battery is dead for some years now. Somewhere down the line, she forgot how to use her phone (and pretty much anything else). It's sad watching her unlearn things.
- Phantasmagoria 8y ago
  For some older people the logic of the operating system is nearly incommunicable. They get keyboards, as they've typed. They can get a grip on a mouse. But after that they've got the face of a dog that's just been shown a new trick.
  - mr_toad 8y ago
    Not just older people. For a lot of people the GUI is the computer, and anything inside may as well be magic. I’ve known more than one who has referred to the whole computer enclosure as the hard drive.
    - skocznymroczny 8y ago
      Obviously, because the screen is the computer, so the big box has to be the hard drive :)
- scarface74 8y ago
  My mom is in her 70s and she has three laptops that she uses regularly - an old netbook that they use when they travel, a 13 inch laptop that she works with away from home and her main computer is a 17 inch that is easy on her eyes. She also has every kind of gadget and adapter known to man, a portable inkjet printer and two or three other working printers at home. Not to mention my old Mac Mini I gave her after installing Windows 7 that she lets her students use when she tutors. My dad has his own 17 inch Dell that he uses and he loves the Roku TV that I got him for Father’s Day. Even worse, they already had DSL but they got cable internet when I stayed there for the summer and was working remotely. She kept both just in case one started acting flaky. She uses Word and Publisher all of the time. It helps that my mom is a retired high school teacher and we always had computers in the house since 1986.
- azernik 8y ago
  Absolutely - this article doesn't claim otherwise. Disproportionately (by a large margin) they don't, but even so about two-thirds of the 65+ age group does use the internet. (See the age chart about halfway down the article.)
- paulie_a 8y ago
  I have relatives that will never use the internet, they are just from a different era and have no interest. Nor do they have cellphones. Conversely I have other similar aged relatives that can't get enough of it on their laptops, iPads and smart phones. There definitely seems to be a split mentality for that generation.
  - magduf 8y ago
    Yep, my 80yo mom can't get enough of it. It's funny, because 15 years ago she poo-pooed it and didn't see why she'd need a computer or the internet.
- rayiner 8y ago
  My dad is in his late 60s and belongs to a generation of non-tech office workers that had to learn to use computers without mice for word processing, spreadsheets, email, etc.
SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
I kinda wish we could pump those numbers up, esp for children on the internet. Thinking back to the 80s and 90s growing up, it sure seems like people were happier. But what do I know!?
- lainga 8y ago
  Laughs in Moodle
- thatswrong0 8y ago
  I feel like this is the same thing they said about tv, before that radio, before that..
  - WillPostForFood 8y ago
    Right, could be a repeating pattern, but could also be a downward slope.
    - pasquinelli 8y ago
      or just shifting around how people zonk out.
  - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
    I don't remember it ever being said about radio. TV certainly, but mainly it became a common theme after the arrival of Sky in UK. Now the kids had 13 channels of shit on the TV to choose from, and even dedicated channels for effortless excess consumption. For the early part of our kid's lives there was only an hour or two of kids TV a day - between end of school and around 5:30pm in time for the evening news. Limiting consumption was far easier. Course there'd still be opportunity to watch soaps etc with parents
    - soared 8y ago
      Are you 70 years old? Radio was at the same stage as the internet in the 50s and 60s.
simmons 8y ago
My Dad is in his early 70's and has never used the Internet. In fact, he never even had a cellphone until this year when I bought him a flip-phone and convinced him to accept it. I think he's plenty capable of learning such technology, he just doesn't see any compelling reason. And I think that's a perfectly reasonable choice -- I'm certainly not going to tell a senior citizen what they need to be happy. He is starting to run into some practical problems. For example, the local library apparently stopped stocking all the paper IRS forms.
- kxrm 8y ago
  Side note: he should be able to get those forms at the post office.
  - astura 8y ago
    The IRS will also mail them plus the directions if you call and ask. Also, the library has internet access, so the librarian should be able to print them.
- SamUK96 8y ago
  Even as a ~20-30 year old, libraries and them acting as community "hubs" seems so foreign already. Part of me worries about the growing individualist and transactional nature of our social lives that the internet is causing [citation needed, I know]. Part of me thinks that the easy way now where we can do IRS forms (and everything) online and to our door of our houses, will make us weak. There is some old Roman bit about easy/good/soft times breeding weak men who bring tough times, but I think i'm going on a tangent from the disappearance of paper IRS forms at local libraries...
  - reaperducer 8y ago
    Even as a ~20-30 year old, libraries and them acting as community "hubs" seems so foreign already. I'm not sure why. Libraries are still massively popular, and most have embraced digital media fully. In many of the cities where I've been in the last 10 years, the libraries are struggling to keep up with demand. Many even have coffee shops and internet cafes. In my estimation, a lot of people under 40 think the library is empty all the time because they've never been to one to see what it offers. It's like how people say they don't watch PBS because there's nothing good on. But how do they know there's nothing good on if they don't watch?
readhn 8y ago
i saw a Dad the other day on a playground with his kid. The Dad stood there staring at his phone the entire time while "playing" with his kid. Kinda sad to see this...
- smokey_the_bear 8y ago
  I see this complaint about parents a lot. I interact with my kids all day. We cook dinner together, we play playdoh, I read to them endlessly. And I'll bike them to the park, and then I sit there and play with my phone while they run around. I do not find it fun to climb on kids playgrounds. I don't enjoy helping my son across the monkey bars, and he makes more progress at it when I don't. Parenting can be mentally and physically exhausting, and it's really not fair or at all useful to judge a parent based on a glimpse of 5 minutes of their day.
NeedMoreTea 8y ago
I wonder will the internet have matured (jumped the shark with excess commercialism, JS, ads etc) to the extent TV has that people start cord cutting the net. Anecdotally the novelty is starting to wear thin with more than a few people I know who barely use anything beyond a chat service and a little shopping (probably at Amazon).
- azernik 8y ago
  People didn't start cutting the TV cord because of commercialism or ads or really anything about TV in particular; they cut because there was a substitute. Until there's another option as good for that chat and shopping, they'll keep their internet connection (even if only a cellular one).
  - the_cat_kittles 8y ago
    there is a kind of natural selection on the internet that breed things that capture attention- sometimes i think of the internet as an intelligent agent thats just trying to exist in as many minds as prominently as possible. it will only get better at this, but i guess i wonder if it gets better easier by hijacking attention, or by being helpful. i feel like hijacking attention might be hitting a ceiling? at least i hope so.
  - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
    I don't think that's completely true. There was a choice between streaming services with no ads and TV with ever longer ad breaks and cheaper programming. Dissatisfaction with TV made the choice easy. No ads was a big selling point for Netflix.
- greedo 8y ago
  I'm tempted to unplug when I retire in a bit more than a decade. After working in tech for 20+ years, the idea is appealing. I doubt it will be very easy to function in an ever-connected society however.
  - nine_k 8y ago
khana 8y ago
And these Americans are the wise ones among us.
walrus01 8y ago
Makes me wonder if when we are 80 years old, we'll be organizing retro LAN parties to play Unreal Tournament (1999 release) in our retirement homes.
- louisswiss 8y ago
  I'll be there for that.
- getoffmyLAN 8y ago
  I stopped LAN'ing way before that; and I'm from the early 80s. (80's of christ not of age.) Let's play something older. I stopped playing way before Unreal.
  - mmt 8y ago
    Indeed, I remember when PhoneNet made ad-hoc AppleTalk networks a bit easier (although, by then, the LocalTalk hardware, genuine and clone, was common enough, too, except sometimes long enough cables could still be a rarity).
- LyndsySimon 8y ago
  ... you’re not already doing that? I organized a LAN party to play SiN a while back. It was fun!
dijit 8y ago
Certain parts of my family do not operate on the same timescale as me wrt tech. It's not just a generational divide in my families case. To me, tech is all-emcompassing, I follow new developments as if it's second nature. To the more tech literate of my family they see the stuff that comes out as usually unnecessary in most cases but upgrade to have the new hotness every second major cycle (iphone 4->6 for example). For the final part of my family, they operate on a different time scale altogether. For them a computer is a computer, they don't really "get old" unless they break. It's difficult to tell them (when they have been told to use the internet for some system of government) and you need to explain to them that their computer from 1995 can't use the internet in the modern day. To them, they have a computer, a working computer, it cost a lot of money. The vacuum cleaner they had for 25 years works, the TV too, why can't they use the thing that cost significantly more than that. (my grandparents ironically have that compaq PC that says it's future-proof on the front). For them to get back into technology it needs to be a form-factor change (IE; Desktop->Tablet) which was how they started to use the internet. Anyway, that's my anecdotal story.
- mindcrime 8y ago
  It's really not an age/generation thing at all. There are plenty of millennials who know shit about computers, while there are "old farts" like Bill Joy, Brian Kernighan, James Gosling, Rob Pike, Patrick Winston, Gerald Sussman, Bjarne Stroupstrup, etc. who know more about computing than most of us will ever know, and are more comfortable with technology than most kids out there today. I think it's always been the case, and probably always will be the case, that some people intuitively embrace / grok technology, and some don't. Stereotypes aside, I haven't found that age has much to do with it.
  - dijit 8y ago
    > It's really not an age/generation thing at all. You're right, that's why I clarified that originally.
ezequiel-garzon 8y ago
It’s reasonable to assume that 11% of the adult US population is still illiterate [1]. I know this is not unique to the US, and that these people may very well be as happy as anyone else. Still, if we sometimes point out that HN is a bit of a bubble, well there’s a big bubble I can’t wrap my mind around well into the 21st century! I would certainly be surprised if an illiterate person made heavy use of the Internet (though I’m sure there are edge cases, as always). [1] https://nces.ed.gov/naal/kf_demographics.asp https://nces.ed.gov/naal/kf_demographics.asp
- pnloyd 8y ago
  A lot of jobs now have internet only application processes.
  - hackujin 8y ago
    A lot of jobs require literacy and a phone number.
  - DavidAdams 8y ago
    This is just one of many reasons why public libraries are so important. It's a major part of the mandate for modern libraries and librarians to offer a place where people with low incomes, low educational attainment, low tech literacy, and even plain old low literacy can get some help navigating occasional requirements like an online job application or trying to enroll in some kind of assistance program.
    - KC8ZKF 8y ago
      My local library in $SMALL_MIDWEST_TOWN lends Verizon portable hotspots for free.
    - Rjevski 8y ago
      More than libraries, I wish there would be really affordable computers. We’ve already proven it’s technically possible, with Raspberry Pis and cheap Android phones. Now I wish we would stop cramming bloat and shit (like useless JavaScript and ads) into our websites and operating systems so those low-end machines actually remain usable and productive. Internet access should also be a right - not high speed 100+Mbps, but basic 1Mbps or so. The unused cell network capacity should be given away for free so that less fortunate people can still get online.
pixelmonkey 8y ago
This is a shockingly small number. For comparison, Pew reports that 24% of Americans have not read a single book, in whole or in part, in 2017. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/03/23/who-doesnt-read-books-in-america/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/03/23/who-doesnt-r...
- toomanybeersies 8y ago
  I didn't read a book for probably 2 years at some point. That doesn't mean I'm poorly educated or ignorant. I was reading a lot, I was just reading articles rather than books. I still don't read a lot of books. I just don't enjoy them that much. I'll read short fiction and poems, but I just don't really like novels.
  - icebraining 8y ago
    What about non-fiction?
    - toomanybeersies 8y ago
      I guess it depends on what you qualify as a book.
- daurnimator 8y ago
  I mean... there are many years (since being an adult) that I haven't read a book: why would I need to read one when I have online news, blog articles, wikipedia and other such resources.
- dmead 8y ago
  whats the exchange rate with wikipedia articles?
  - ben_w 8y ago
    I think that’s a fair point. If you exclude audiobooks, I don’t think I read one between the two previous summer solstices… but I’ve been writing and am now in the middle of editing what is currently a 130k word novel.
Senderman 8y ago
89% of Americans use the internet.
KamiCrit 8y ago
At home I'm very proud of my triple monitor setup and second iteration of my hand assembled computer. The setup is built with ease of use in mind. To lazily chat with friends, unwind, and keep up with bleeding edge news. When I leave my little tech temple, my mobile computer of choice is a flip phone. A substitute calculator and unit converter. With no GPS it's great reading the land and people in it. Very occasionally I'll cheat and bum around in front of a cafe and use the tablet to find a spot but most plans are made at home on a printed map. As stated in other articles here, it's great not having a slab fight for your attention with bleeps and red notifications while out on adventure. TL;DR / Long story short: Be the friend at the restaurant conversing, not on the glass slab.
- ralusek 8y ago
  You're one very impressive 14 year old, clearly born in the wrong generation.
LaikaF 8y ago
My Grandfather is one of those 11%. However I suspect he's a bit different from the others. Up until the late 90s he was programming Fortran and COBOL. He started during the Korean War or just after I believe. Towards the end he was mostly doing contract work as one of the few people who could still work on them. But after he retired technology stopped for him. The latest innovation he'll use is a DVD player. The only reason he doesn't have a tube TV is it died five years ago and we got him a flat screen. To be fair he may never have gotten used to using a GUI on a PC or the internet at large. But still, it's my grandmother who runs their email account and shared cellphone.
- reaperducer 8y ago
  I think your grandfather and I are kindred spirits. When I retire, I don't plan to ever use a computer again if I don't have to. There's nothing on the internet that can compete with the fulfillment available from my wife, my dog, and my actual real life friends.
  - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
    I'll keep the computer but I'm planning to disconnect from the internet once I retire.
    - Bromskloss 8y ago
      For what tasks do you intend to use the computer?
      - reaperducer 8y ago
        Everything that computers were used for before the internet?
        Bromskloss 8y ago
        Yeah, what was that, really? Typing QBASIC programs from paper into the computer? Using it as a fancy typewriter? Calculating ballistic trajectories? That's all I can remember.
jonstaab 8y ago
I was a little disappointed not to read anything about conscientious objectors, having just read Wendell Berry's 1987 article "Why I am NOT going to buy a computer" [0]. Idealistic as he is, Berry's work appeals very strongly to me. But maybe there isn't anyone like that anymore. [0] http://home.btconnect.com/tipiglen/berrynot.html http://home.btconnect.com/tipiglen/berrynot.html
sandov 8y ago
I would like to know what portion use the Internet for whorthwhile activities and what portion uses it only for browsing Facebook and Twitter.
- jedberg 8y ago
  I find it interesting that you consider those activities not worthwhile. I'm sure you use the internet for things that are "less worthwhile" than those things, at least to me. But that's what it's really all about anyway right? Different things have different value to different people.
mahgnous 8y ago
I might join em.
Nick9075 8y ago
I have social anxiety. I only use the interact when interacting with people outside of work or in a business professional setting.
coldtea 8y ago
What's worse is that 99% of Americans, or rather the global population, (including businesses) use it for BS.
Koshkin 8y ago
I wish I could be one of them.
- aacook 8y ago
  You can, at least for a few hours a day, or even for multi-day streaks. Your friends might think you're weird at first but they'll get over it.
RaceWon 8y ago
I'm not a hacker. I got my first PC in '88 (a 286 with a 20mb HD) because for sure it was going to be the thing in a few short years. I was 28 and wanted to use it for my business... the NIGHTMARE of trying to; load software, hookup a printer, get the modem to work and so and so was just unbelievable. I persisted though, in fact when Windows was seriously starting to dominate-I even refused to use for a damn long time. Anyway, my point is I bet more than a few of those 11 percenters are peeps my age who just never got comfortable at the command screen.
lucideer 8y ago
"don't use the internet" is a vague qualifier. My father has a Gmail and a Facebook account, both of which he signed up for himself. He last signed into the latter no less than 5 years ago. He interacts with his email account by calling myself or my siblings and asking them to check it for him. A few times a year. Sometime a year or two ago he borrowed my brother's computer and went online to do some research into something he wanted to buy online; no assistance required so he's not computer illiterate. He just has absolutely zero day-to-day need for them. 11% seems very very low.
Kadin 8y ago
It's more impressive when you turn this number around: 89% of Americans "use the Internet", up from just over 50% less than 20 years ago. That is an insane adoption curve for a network that basically didn't exist -- at least not in an approachable, mainstream way -- within the current memory of many of its users. That's faster than the update rate of either the telephone or electricity or indoor plumbing. (Arguably fair I suppose, since those things all require more infrastructure than the Internet does, which if needed can run over existing telephone infrastructure, and did for a long time.) And of the people who aren't using the Internet, the plurality (according to the article) are declining to use it by their own decision -- "just not interested" -- not because they can't afford to get online, or don't know how to, or some other externally-imposed hurdle. Which is their prerogative; if people aren't online, I'd hope it's by their own choice and not through inability (the same as not reading books -- if someone isn't reading books regularly, one hopes it's because they're not interested, not because they're illiterate).
IIAOPSW 8y ago
It blew my mind when I visited my grandmother recently. There's a computer in the household. My grandfather used it avidly since the days of dialup. He didn't give up the dialup connection until well into the 2010s. I'm not sure if he still uses it. My grandmother was never interested in it. My grandmother still certainly has her wits about her. She does NOT fit the mold of someone un-skeptical or easily swayed due to senility. Yet like many older people she voted for Trump despite voting Democrat in the past and living in a very blue area. This of course is very curious to me. Eventually my conversation with my grandmother went to the topic of news media. I had mentioned that I do not like the way news reports anecdotes and not data and paints a misleading picture. I mentioned a few of my favorite sources which eschew this trend (fivethirtyeight, the economist etc). My grandmother replies that she knows full well the news is garbage. The thing is to my grandmother the news is whatever she can buy at the corner news stand. Her options are the New York Post or the Daily News. She has considered maybe spending the extra money to buy the New York Times. Coming from a world where news comes in an infinite stream from infinite sources straight into my pocket 24/7, it completely blew my mind that news for her comes from 2 sources and only once a day and both are owned by Murdoch. I am used to a world where debates can abruptly end with "lets look it up". In the world of my grandmother, remembering a few stories from the papers and friends is the only reasonable basis to form an opinion on anything. Maybe we've overvalued the importance of fake news on the internet.
- oh_sigh 8y ago
  Presumably your grandmother has had the same news options for the past... many years, and was subject to the same pressures. Are you just thinking about this now because she voted against your wishes?
  - IIAOPSW 8y ago
    My grandmothers news options didn't manifest in any unexpected way in the past. Nothing to do with my wishes.
aacook 8y ago
I left a comment about this on HN the other day (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17562306 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17562306) - 8 months ago, I launched a product to serve the older population, blending old and new, called NanaGram (https://nanagram.co https://nanagram.co). We let you send printed photos to a loved one in the mail with just a text message. Older people like my late grandfather are some of the happiest I've ever met. I think one of their secrets is growing up in a more disconnected world. I've honed my ability to stay off the internet for long periods of time but this skill is just the default state for many older people and isn't a challenge they face. I didn't always struggle with internet addiction and remember life before and after the internet. Some of my most joyful moments in the past year have been visiting loved ones just after spending 2 or 3 days completely disconnected. There's a great book called Happiness is a Choice You Make about the "oldest old", people over the age of 85. I touched on in the book in this blog entry and expanded on some of the lessons I learned hanging out with my 94-year-old grandfather as often as possible over the last couple years: https://nanagram.co/blog/on-happiness-from-tirrell-cook https://nanagram.co/blog/on-happiness-from-tirrell-cook. My grandfather never learned how to internet but we did have a hilarious unboxing moment with the Amazon Echo this past December. He made it to a viral TV show and tried to negotiate for bitcoin as compensation. While it was very promising, we never truly got his Echo habit to stick as he and my grandmother kept pressing the wrong buttons. https://nanagram.co/blog/echo-show-unboxing https://nanagram.co/blog/echo-show-unboxing
nishantvyas 8y ago
Diffusion of Innovation always has "Laggard" All of us have been in different part of spectrum for various innovations... when the innovation/trend is irreversible, everyone eventually converts.... remember rotary phones, VCRs etc refer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations
rblion 8y ago
My mom, aunt, and grandma are among them.
_bxg1 8y ago
I wish all three perspectives had been more like the last one; the first two were pretty much just the stereotype of old people who don't like the internet because it's too newfangled. It's more interesting to learn about factors that limit people who otherwise might use it.
beenBoutIT 8y ago
Bernie Sanders needs to add this sad statistic to his spiel about how America isn't doing well. It fits in perfectly between "We have more people in jail than any other country on Earth" and "Only major country that doesn't guarantee right to health care".
azujus 8y ago
Do we need another type of operating system interface to solve this? Something simpler, like TV or Minitel? It would seem that Apps have helped to bring the last 20% of Americans online, would we need something even simpler to bring the rest onboard?
agumonkey 8y ago
My 96 yo neighbors use internet, without too much hassle. Just like most people they don't understand it, but they use games, search, chat .. funny.
Bromskloss 8y ago
That's pretty cool. I think we need a reminder that the Internet isn't a prerequisite for life. :-)
Fnoord 8y ago
When I read an article like this I'm reminded that Pamela Jones (PJ) [1] of Groklaw [2] -specifically, her last Groklaw article [3]- might be one of them. Quoting from the last article: "The owner of Lavabit tells us that he's stopped using email and if we knew what he knew, we'd stop too. [...] Oddly, if everyone did that, leap off the Internet, the world's economy would collapse, I suppose. I can't really hope for that. But for me, the Internet is over. [...]" My point isn't that a significant percentage of the 11% consciously don't use the Internet for similar reasons. I don't know how significant such as percentage would be. My point is that there are people around who consciously do not use the Internet (at all) for privacy/security reasons. The Internet isn't a panacea. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_Jones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_Jones [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groklaw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groklaw [3] http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130818120421175 http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130818120421175
mxyxpt1k 8y ago
My 90 year old father-in-law has never used a computer or the Internet directly, but my wife buys from Amazon and searches Google for him.
Dowwie 8y ago
I just got back from a camping trip in the White mountains region of New Hampshire. Neighboring cities strike me as those where high tech lifestyles aren't needed nor preferred. Locals congregate in the early morning where breakfasts are served. No one looks at a phone once. People seem to enjoy the company of those in reality over those of their online social network. I see why this lifestyle is alluring.
ksec 8y ago
And nearly 55% of Chinese don't use Internet. Yes, that is nearly 800M still without Smartphone or Internet. There is going to be a very long tail, likely 10 years plus to bring the last 500 to 600M online. The rest are likely not going to be online in their life time or has no interest in doing so. Out of the 7.4 Billion people on earth, there is 5B Mobile Phone users, 3.5 Smartphone users. So it will likely take another twenty years before we reach 6 Billion Smartphone users.
guard0g 8y ago
I wonder how many members of Congress fall into this category...

195 points by kdazzle 8y ago

Old people can use the internet just fine if they want to; my 80-year-old mother happily uses it to buy all kinds of stuff, to pay her bills, to keep up with family on Facebook, etc.

neverartful 8y ago
Probably depends on the person. My 79-year-old father has early stages of Alzheimer's/dementia and can't remember the names of his grandkids. I would say that he can't use the internet just fine - even if he wants to.
- shredprez 8y ago
  Sorry to hear about your father, neverartful; that has to be incredibly difficult. Wishing you peace, for whatever it's worth.
- trumped 8y ago
  at that point, he probably should be considered internet-disabled (among other things)... as an analogy, would you expect a paraplegic to swim with it's own body? sorry, but that's reality...
  - holygrail111 8y ago
    African paraplegic or Mexican? Pink Floyd wants to know (they bankrolled monty python and the holy grail.)
- asadlionpk 8y ago
  Sorry to hear that. Stay strong! I had taught my grandma how to use a feature-phone and she was pretty happy with it. Later she was diagnosed with dementia, that phone's battery is dead for some years now. Somewhere down the line, she forgot how to use her phone (and pretty much anything else). It's sad watching her unlearn things.
Phantasmagoria 8y ago
For some older people the logic of the operating system is nearly incommunicable. They get keyboards, as they've typed. They can get a grip on a mouse. But after that they've got the face of a dog that's just been shown a new trick.
- mr_toad 8y ago
  Not just older people. For a lot of people the GUI is the computer, and anything inside may as well be magic. I’ve known more than one who has referred to the whole computer enclosure as the hard drive.
  - skocznymroczny 8y ago
    Obviously, because the screen is the computer, so the big box has to be the hard drive :)
scarface74 8y ago
My mom is in her 70s and she has three laptops that she uses regularly - an old netbook that they use when they travel, a 13 inch laptop that she works with away from home and her main computer is a 17 inch that is easy on her eyes. She also has every kind of gadget and adapter known to man, a portable inkjet printer and two or three other working printers at home. Not to mention my old Mac Mini I gave her after installing Windows 7 that she lets her students use when she tutors. My dad has his own 17 inch Dell that he uses and he loves the Roku TV that I got him for Father’s Day. Even worse, they already had DSL but they got cable internet when I stayed there for the summer and was working remotely. She kept both just in case one started acting flaky. She uses Word and Publisher all of the time. It helps that my mom is a retired high school teacher and we always had computers in the house since 1986.
azernik 8y ago
Absolutely - this article doesn't claim otherwise. Disproportionately (by a large margin) they don't, but even so about two-thirds of the 65+ age group does use the internet. (See the age chart about halfway down the article.)
paulie_a 8y ago
I have relatives that will never use the internet, they are just from a different era and have no interest. Nor do they have cellphones. Conversely I have other similar aged relatives that can't get enough of it on their laptops, iPads and smart phones. There definitely seems to be a split mentality for that generation.
- magduf 8y ago
  Yep, my 80yo mom can't get enough of it. It's funny, because 15 years ago she poo-pooed it and didn't see why she'd need a computer or the internet.
rayiner 8y ago
My dad is in his late 60s and belongs to a generation of non-tech office workers that had to learn to use computers without mice for word processing, spreadsheets, email, etc.

SlowRobotAhead 8y ago

I kinda wish we could pump those numbers up, esp for children on the internet. Thinking back to the 80s and 90s growing up, it sure seems like people were happier. But what do I know!?

lainga 8y ago
Laughs in Moodle
thatswrong0 8y ago
I feel like this is the same thing they said about tv, before that radio, before that..
- WillPostForFood 8y ago
  Right, could be a repeating pattern, but could also be a downward slope.
  - pasquinelli 8y ago
    or just shifting around how people zonk out.
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  I don't remember it ever being said about radio. TV certainly, but mainly it became a common theme after the arrival of Sky in UK. Now the kids had 13 channels of shit on the TV to choose from, and even dedicated channels for effortless excess consumption. For the early part of our kid's lives there was only an hour or two of kids TV a day - between end of school and around 5:30pm in time for the evening news. Limiting consumption was far easier. Course there'd still be opportunity to watch soaps etc with parents
  - soared 8y ago
    Are you 70 years old? Radio was at the same stage as the internet in the 50s and 60s.

simmons 8y ago

My Dad is in his early 70's and has never used the Internet. In fact, he never even had a cellphone until this year when I bought him a flip-phone and convinced him to accept it. I think he's plenty capable of learning such technology, he just doesn't see any compelling reason. And I think that's a perfectly reasonable choice -- I'm certainly not going to tell a senior citizen what they need to be happy. He is starting to run into some practical problems. For example, the local library apparently stopped stocking all the paper IRS forms.

kxrm 8y ago
Side note: he should be able to get those forms at the post office.
- astura 8y ago
  The IRS will also mail them plus the directions if you call and ask. Also, the library has internet access, so the librarian should be able to print them.
SamUK96 8y ago
Even as a ~20-30 year old, libraries and them acting as community "hubs" seems so foreign already. Part of me worries about the growing individualist and transactional nature of our social lives that the internet is causing [citation needed, I know]. Part of me thinks that the easy way now where we can do IRS forms (and everything) online and to our door of our houses, will make us weak. There is some old Roman bit about easy/good/soft times breeding weak men who bring tough times, but I think i'm going on a tangent from the disappearance of paper IRS forms at local libraries...
- reaperducer 8y ago
  Even as a ~20-30 year old, libraries and them acting as community "hubs" seems so foreign already. I'm not sure why. Libraries are still massively popular, and most have embraced digital media fully. In many of the cities where I've been in the last 10 years, the libraries are struggling to keep up with demand. Many even have coffee shops and internet cafes. In my estimation, a lot of people under 40 think the library is empty all the time because they've never been to one to see what it offers. It's like how people say they don't watch PBS because there's nothing good on. But how do they know there's nothing good on if they don't watch?

readhn 8y ago

i saw a Dad the other day on a playground with his kid. The Dad stood there staring at his phone the entire time while "playing" with his kid. Kinda sad to see this...

smokey_the_bear 8y ago
I see this complaint about parents a lot. I interact with my kids all day. We cook dinner together, we play playdoh, I read to them endlessly. And I'll bike them to the park, and then I sit there and play with my phone while they run around. I do not find it fun to climb on kids playgrounds. I don't enjoy helping my son across the monkey bars, and he makes more progress at it when I don't. Parenting can be mentally and physically exhausting, and it's really not fair or at all useful to judge a parent based on a glimpse of 5 minutes of their day.

NeedMoreTea 8y ago

I wonder will the internet have matured (jumped the shark with excess commercialism, JS, ads etc) to the extent TV has that people start cord cutting the net. Anecdotally the novelty is starting to wear thin with more than a few people I know who barely use anything beyond a chat service and a little shopping (probably at Amazon).

azernik 8y ago
People didn't start cutting the TV cord because of commercialism or ads or really anything about TV in particular; they cut because there was a substitute. Until there's another option as good for that chat and shopping, they'll keep their internet connection (even if only a cellular one).
- the_cat_kittles 8y ago
  there is a kind of natural selection on the internet that breed things that capture attention- sometimes i think of the internet as an intelligent agent thats just trying to exist in as many minds as prominently as possible. it will only get better at this, but i guess i wonder if it gets better easier by hijacking attention, or by being helpful. i feel like hijacking attention might be hitting a ceiling? at least i hope so.
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  I don't think that's completely true. There was a choice between streaming services with no ads and TV with ever longer ad breaks and cheaper programming. Dissatisfaction with TV made the choice easy. No ads was a big selling point for Netflix.
greedo 8y ago
I'm tempted to unplug when I retire in a bit more than a decade. After working in tech for 20+ years, the idea is appealing. I doubt it will be very easy to function in an ever-connected society however.
- nine_k 8y ago

khana 8y ago

And these Americans are the wise ones among us.

walrus01 8y ago

Makes me wonder if when we are 80 years old, we'll be organizing retro LAN parties to play Unreal Tournament (1999 release) in our retirement homes.

louisswiss 8y ago
I'll be there for that.
getoffmyLAN 8y ago
I stopped LAN'ing way before that; and I'm from the early 80s. (80's of christ not of age.) Let's play something older. I stopped playing way before Unreal.
- mmt 8y ago
  Indeed, I remember when PhoneNet made ad-hoc AppleTalk networks a bit easier (although, by then, the LocalTalk hardware, genuine and clone, was common enough, too, except sometimes long enough cables could still be a rarity).
LyndsySimon 8y ago
... you’re not already doing that? I organized a LAN party to play SiN a while back. It was fun!

dijit 8y ago

Certain parts of my family do not operate on the same timescale as me wrt tech. It's not just a generational divide in my families case. To me, tech is all-emcompassing, I follow new developments as if it's second nature. To the more tech literate of my family they see the stuff that comes out as usually unnecessary in most cases but upgrade to have the new hotness every second major cycle (iphone 4->6 for example). For the final part of my family, they operate on a different time scale altogether. For them a computer is a computer, they don't really "get old" unless they break. It's difficult to tell them (when they have been told to use the internet for some system of government) and you need to explain to them that their computer from 1995 can't use the internet in the modern day. To them, they have a computer, a working computer, it cost a lot of money. The vacuum cleaner they had for 25 years works, the TV too, why can't they use the thing that cost significantly more than that. (my grandparents ironically have that compaq PC that says it's future-proof on the front). For them to get back into technology it needs to be a form-factor change (IE; Desktop->Tablet) which was how they started to use the internet. Anyway, that's my anecdotal story.

mindcrime 8y ago
It's really not an age/generation thing at all. There are plenty of millennials who know shit about computers, while there are "old farts" like Bill Joy, Brian Kernighan, James Gosling, Rob Pike, Patrick Winston, Gerald Sussman, Bjarne Stroupstrup, etc. who know more about computing than most of us will ever know, and are more comfortable with technology than most kids out there today. I think it's always been the case, and probably always will be the case, that some people intuitively embrace / grok technology, and some don't. Stereotypes aside, I haven't found that age has much to do with it.
- dijit 8y ago
  > It's really not an age/generation thing at all. You're right, that's why I clarified that originally.

ezequiel-garzon 8y ago

It’s reasonable to assume that 11% of the adult US population is still illiterate [1]. I know this is not unique to the US, and that these people may very well be as happy as anyone else. Still, if we sometimes point out that HN is a bit of a bubble, well there’s a big bubble I can’t wrap my mind around well into the 21st century! I would certainly be surprised if an illiterate person made heavy use of the Internet (though I’m sure there are edge cases, as always). [1] https://nces.ed.gov/naal/kf_demographics.asp https://nces.ed.gov/naal/kf_demographics.asp

pnloyd 8y ago
A lot of jobs now have internet only application processes.
- hackujin 8y ago
  A lot of jobs require literacy and a phone number.
- DavidAdams 8y ago
  This is just one of many reasons why public libraries are so important. It's a major part of the mandate for modern libraries and librarians to offer a place where people with low incomes, low educational attainment, low tech literacy, and even plain old low literacy can get some help navigating occasional requirements like an online job application or trying to enroll in some kind of assistance program.
  - KC8ZKF 8y ago
    My local library in $SMALL_MIDWEST_TOWN lends Verizon portable hotspots for free.
  - Rjevski 8y ago
    More than libraries, I wish there would be really affordable computers. We’ve already proven it’s technically possible, with Raspberry Pis and cheap Android phones. Now I wish we would stop cramming bloat and shit (like useless JavaScript and ads) into our websites and operating systems so those low-end machines actually remain usable and productive. Internet access should also be a right - not high speed 100+Mbps, but basic 1Mbps or so. The unused cell network capacity should be given away for free so that less fortunate people can still get online.

pixelmonkey 8y ago

This is a shockingly small number. For comparison, Pew reports that 24% of Americans have not read a single book, in whole or in part, in 2017. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/03/23/who-doesnt-read-books-in-america/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/03/23/who-doesnt-r...

toomanybeersies 8y ago
I didn't read a book for probably 2 years at some point. That doesn't mean I'm poorly educated or ignorant. I was reading a lot, I was just reading articles rather than books. I still don't read a lot of books. I just don't enjoy them that much. I'll read short fiction and poems, but I just don't really like novels.
- icebraining 8y ago
  What about non-fiction?
  - toomanybeersies 8y ago
    I guess it depends on what you qualify as a book.
daurnimator 8y ago
I mean... there are many years (since being an adult) that I haven't read a book: why would I need to read one when I have online news, blog articles, wikipedia and other such resources.
dmead 8y ago
whats the exchange rate with wikipedia articles?
- ben_w 8y ago
  I think that’s a fair point. If you exclude audiobooks, I don’t think I read one between the two previous summer solstices… but I’ve been writing and am now in the middle of editing what is currently a 130k word novel.

Senderman 8y ago

89% of Americans use the internet.

KamiCrit 8y ago

At home I'm very proud of my triple monitor setup and second iteration of my hand assembled computer. The setup is built with ease of use in mind. To lazily chat with friends, unwind, and keep up with bleeding edge news. When I leave my little tech temple, my mobile computer of choice is a flip phone. A substitute calculator and unit converter. With no GPS it's great reading the land and people in it. Very occasionally I'll cheat and bum around in front of a cafe and use the tablet to find a spot but most plans are made at home on a printed map. As stated in other articles here, it's great not having a slab fight for your attention with bleeps and red notifications while out on adventure. TL;DR / Long story short: Be the friend at the restaurant conversing, not on the glass slab.

ralusek 8y ago
You're one very impressive 14 year old, clearly born in the wrong generation.

LaikaF 8y ago

My Grandfather is one of those 11%. However I suspect he's a bit different from the others. Up until the late 90s he was programming Fortran and COBOL. He started during the Korean War or just after I believe. Towards the end he was mostly doing contract work as one of the few people who could still work on them. But after he retired technology stopped for him. The latest innovation he'll use is a DVD player. The only reason he doesn't have a tube TV is it died five years ago and we got him a flat screen. To be fair he may never have gotten used to using a GUI on a PC or the internet at large. But still, it's my grandmother who runs their email account and shared cellphone.

reaperducer 8y ago
I think your grandfather and I are kindred spirits. When I retire, I don't plan to ever use a computer again if I don't have to. There's nothing on the internet that can compete with the fulfillment available from my wife, my dog, and my actual real life friends.
- tonyedgecombe 8y ago
  I'll keep the computer but I'm planning to disconnect from the internet once I retire.
  - Bromskloss 8y ago
    For what tasks do you intend to use the computer?
    - reaperducer 8y ago
      Everything that computers were used for before the internet?
      - Bromskloss 8y ago
        Yeah, what was that, really? Typing QBASIC programs from paper into the computer? Using it as a fancy typewriter? Calculating ballistic trajectories? That's all I can remember.

jonstaab 8y ago

I was a little disappointed not to read anything about conscientious objectors, having just read Wendell Berry's 1987 article "Why I am NOT going to buy a computer" [0]. Idealistic as he is, Berry's work appeals very strongly to me. But maybe there isn't anyone like that anymore. [0] http://home.btconnect.com/tipiglen/berrynot.html http://home.btconnect.com/tipiglen/berrynot.html

sandov 8y ago

I would like to know what portion use the Internet for whorthwhile activities and what portion uses it only for browsing Facebook and Twitter.

jedberg 8y ago
I find it interesting that you consider those activities not worthwhile. I'm sure you use the internet for things that are "less worthwhile" than those things, at least to me. But that's what it's really all about anyway right? Different things have different value to different people.

mahgnous 8y ago

I might join em.

Nick9075 8y ago

I have social anxiety. I only use the interact when interacting with people outside of work or in a business professional setting.

coldtea 8y ago

What's worse is that 99% of Americans, or rather the global population, (including businesses) use it for BS.

Koshkin 8y ago

I wish I could be one of them.

aacook 8y ago
You can, at least for a few hours a day, or even for multi-day streaks. Your friends might think you're weird at first but they'll get over it.

RaceWon 8y ago

I'm not a hacker. I got my first PC in '88 (a 286 with a 20mb HD) because for sure it was going to be the thing in a few short years. I was 28 and wanted to use it for my business... the NIGHTMARE of trying to; load software, hookup a printer, get the modem to work and so and so was just unbelievable. I persisted though, in fact when Windows was seriously starting to dominate-I even refused to use for a damn long time. Anyway, my point is I bet more than a few of those 11 percenters are peeps my age who just never got comfortable at the command screen.

lucideer 8y ago

"don't use the internet" is a vague qualifier. My father has a Gmail and a Facebook account, both of which he signed up for himself. He last signed into the latter no less than 5 years ago. He interacts with his email account by calling myself or my siblings and asking them to check it for him. A few times a year. Sometime a year or two ago he borrowed my brother's computer and went online to do some research into something he wanted to buy online; no assistance required so he's not computer illiterate. He just has absolutely zero day-to-day need for them. 11% seems very very low.

Kadin 8y ago

It's more impressive when you turn this number around: 89% of Americans "use the Internet", up from just over 50% less than 20 years ago. That is an insane adoption curve for a network that basically didn't exist -- at least not in an approachable, mainstream way -- within the current memory of many of its users. That's faster than the update rate of either the telephone or electricity or indoor plumbing. (Arguably fair I suppose, since those things all require more infrastructure than the Internet does, which if needed can run over existing telephone infrastructure, and did for a long time.) And of the people who aren't using the Internet, the plurality (according to the article) are declining to use it by their own decision -- "just not interested" -- not because they can't afford to get online, or don't know how to, or some other externally-imposed hurdle. Which is their prerogative; if people aren't online, I'd hope it's by their own choice and not through inability (the same as not reading books -- if someone isn't reading books regularly, one hopes it's because they're not interested, not because they're illiterate).

IIAOPSW 8y ago

It blew my mind when I visited my grandmother recently. There's a computer in the household. My grandfather used it avidly since the days of dialup. He didn't give up the dialup connection until well into the 2010s. I'm not sure if he still uses it. My grandmother was never interested in it. My grandmother still certainly has her wits about her. She does NOT fit the mold of someone un-skeptical or easily swayed due to senility. Yet like many older people she voted for Trump despite voting Democrat in the past and living in a very blue area. This of course is very curious to me. Eventually my conversation with my grandmother went to the topic of news media. I had mentioned that I do not like the way news reports anecdotes and not data and paints a misleading picture. I mentioned a few of my favorite sources which eschew this trend (fivethirtyeight, the economist etc). My grandmother replies that she knows full well the news is garbage. The thing is to my grandmother the news is whatever she can buy at the corner news stand. Her options are the New York Post or the Daily News. She has considered maybe spending the extra money to buy the New York Times. Coming from a world where news comes in an infinite stream from infinite sources straight into my pocket 24/7, it completely blew my mind that news for her comes from 2 sources and only once a day and both are owned by Murdoch. I am used to a world where debates can abruptly end with "lets look it up". In the world of my grandmother, remembering a few stories from the papers and friends is the only reasonable basis to form an opinion on anything. Maybe we've overvalued the importance of fake news on the internet.

oh_sigh 8y ago
Presumably your grandmother has had the same news options for the past... many years, and was subject to the same pressures. Are you just thinking about this now because she voted against your wishes?
- IIAOPSW 8y ago
  My grandmothers news options didn't manifest in any unexpected way in the past. Nothing to do with my wishes.

aacook 8y ago

I left a comment about this on HN the other day (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17562306 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17562306) - 8 months ago, I launched a product to serve the older population, blending old and new, called NanaGram (https://nanagram.co https://nanagram.co). We let you send printed photos to a loved one in the mail with just a text message. Older people like my late grandfather are some of the happiest I've ever met. I think one of their secrets is growing up in a more disconnected world. I've honed my ability to stay off the internet for long periods of time but this skill is just the default state for many older people and isn't a challenge they face. I didn't always struggle with internet addiction and remember life before and after the internet. Some of my most joyful moments in the past year have been visiting loved ones just after spending 2 or 3 days completely disconnected. There's a great book called Happiness is a Choice You Make about the "oldest old", people over the age of 85. I touched on in the book in this blog entry and expanded on some of the lessons I learned hanging out with my 94-year-old grandfather as often as possible over the last couple years: https://nanagram.co/blog/on-happiness-from-tirrell-cook https://nanagram.co/blog/on-happiness-from-tirrell-cook. My grandfather never learned how to internet but we did have a hilarious unboxing moment with the Amazon Echo this past December. He made it to a viral TV show and tried to negotiate for bitcoin as compensation. While it was very promising, we never truly got his Echo habit to stick as he and my grandmother kept pressing the wrong buttons. https://nanagram.co/blog/echo-show-unboxing https://nanagram.co/blog/echo-show-unboxing

nishantvyas 8y ago

Diffusion of Innovation always has "Laggard" All of us have been in different part of spectrum for various innovations... when the innovation/trend is irreversible, everyone eventually converts.... remember rotary phones, VCRs etc refer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations

rblion 8y ago

My mom, aunt, and grandma are among them.

_bxg1 8y ago

I wish all three perspectives had been more like the last one; the first two were pretty much just the stereotype of old people who don't like the internet because it's too newfangled. It's more interesting to learn about factors that limit people who otherwise might use it.

beenBoutIT 8y ago

Bernie Sanders needs to add this sad statistic to his spiel about how America isn't doing well. It fits in perfectly between "We have more people in jail than any other country on Earth" and "Only major country that doesn't guarantee right to health care".

azujus 8y ago

Do we need another type of operating system interface to solve this? Something simpler, like TV or Minitel? It would seem that Apps have helped to bring the last 20% of Americans online, would we need something even simpler to bring the rest onboard?

agumonkey 8y ago

My 96 yo neighbors use internet, without too much hassle. Just like most people they don't understand it, but they use games, search, chat .. funny.

Bromskloss 8y ago

That's pretty cool. I think we need a reminder that the Internet isn't a prerequisite for life. :-)

Fnoord 8y ago

When I read an article like this I'm reminded that Pamela Jones (PJ) [1] of Groklaw [2] -specifically, her last Groklaw article [3]- might be one of them. Quoting from the last article: "The owner of Lavabit tells us that he's stopped using email and if we knew what he knew, we'd stop too. [...] Oddly, if everyone did that, leap off the Internet, the world's economy would collapse, I suppose. I can't really hope for that. But for me, the Internet is over. [...]" My point isn't that a significant percentage of the 11% consciously don't use the Internet for similar reasons. I don't know how significant such as percentage would be. My point is that there are people around who consciously do not use the Internet (at all) for privacy/security reasons. The Internet isn't a panacea. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_Jones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_Jones [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groklaw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groklaw [3] http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130818120421175 http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130818120421175

mxyxpt1k 8y ago

My 90 year old father-in-law has never used a computer or the Internet directly, but my wife buys from Amazon and searches Google for him.

Dowwie 8y ago

I just got back from a camping trip in the White mountains region of New Hampshire. Neighboring cities strike me as those where high tech lifestyles aren't needed nor preferred. Locals congregate in the early morning where breakfasts are served. No one looks at a phone once. People seem to enjoy the company of those in reality over those of their online social network. I see why this lifestyle is alluring.

ksec 8y ago

And nearly 55% of Chinese don't use Internet. Yes, that is nearly 800M still without Smartphone or Internet. There is going to be a very long tail, likely 10 years plus to bring the last 500 to 600M online. The rest are likely not going to be online in their life time or has no interest in doing so. Out of the 7.4 Billion people on earth, there is 5B Mobile Phone users, 3.5 Smartphone users. So it will likely take another twenty years before we reach 6 Billion Smartphone users.

guard0g 8y ago

I wonder how many members of Congress fall into this category...