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About three-in-ten U.S. adults say they are ‘almost constantly’ online (2021)
- Gnatworth 4y agoYeah, guilty as charged. I’ve probably been constantly online since I was 13 (24 now). It’s incredibly easy to find a multitude of things to do online to keep an ADHD-brained person entertained for hours on end, especially if they don’t have a social spark that makes them want to form connections with other people or go on any kind of social outing. I think this number will continue to rise in the future. Probably 40% by 2035.
- catchnear4321 4y ago> especially if they don’t have a social spark that makes them want to form connections with other people or go on any kind of social outing. this is a minimal connection made as part of a virtual outing. (hello.) many widely-held constructs are getting redefined. like what it means to be “social” or “connected.” zuck wasn’t wrong, but metaverse is already here. it’s just the internet, and we are slowly integrating it more fully into ourselves.
- Gnatworth 4y ago(Hi!) I think I’m seeing it, too. A number of IRL friends I’ve made were originally just known online until I moved out and we began hanging out in person (after we confirmed none of us are secretly human traffickers). I believe that non-virtual connection is always going to remain important. People who are social butterflies use things like Discord, Instagram, datings apps, and Twitter to really just optimize what they already had going for them in real life, and are having more success than they could have had in a past time, imo.
- Mezzie 4y agoI'm 34 and I've been online as often as I've been allowed for 30 years. Hell, I used to load sites/discussions while I got ready for school, print them off and bring them to school and spend my time reading them. I'm not sure internet use alone is concerning. It was a problem when I was a kid because it isolated me, but it's also hard to tell how the causality worked there because I was a weird-ass little kid. I'd love to look at/might try to find later what the average amount of time a person spent writing letters or on the phone was - or TV or radio listening. From what I've seen, most people use the Internet like we used to use telephones (lots of young people whose primary contact with their friends is online and I can't see much of a difference between hanging out in Discord for hours and talking on the phone with your bff for hours) or television/radio (I remember all the back and forth about the boob tube and honestly the passive consumption is pretty similar). It'll also be interesting to see if anybody starts to disengage. The Internet relies on constant novelty to keep people engaged since the body naturally starts regulating to things and once you've seen enough it stops hitting the way it used to.
- Gnatworth 4y ago>I'm not sure internet use alone is concerning. It was a problem when I was a kid because it isolated me, but it's also hard to tell how the causality worked there because I was a weird-ass little kid. Same with being a weird kid. Being weird led to not having many friends led to relying on internet socialization more and more. >It'll also be interesting to see if anybody starts to disengage. The Internet relies on constant novelty to keep people engaged since the body naturally starts regulating to things and once you've seen enough it stops hitting the way it used to. I’m hopeful but cautious. The internet is novelty manifest. There are single sites alone that can keep someone occupied for days. Content aggregation in the form of applications like Tik Tok, IG reels, YouTube shorts, and even HN have the ability of providing hours of content and then some by just refreshing the page or scrolling down. It’ll take willpower for sure for some people to get out of the rut that they’re in right now, and especially for future generations, if entertainment continues to advance.
- Mezzie 4y ago> Content aggregation in the form of applications like Tik Tok, IG reels, YouTube shorts, and even HN have the ability of providing hours of content and then some by just refreshing the page or scrolling down. Like over a thousand TV channels? And yet for some reason we were all pretty ready to ditch cable and pursue other entertainment options. Easy isn't enough. (I'm amused by how long this has been going on; Victorians had a similar panic about novels. Though given how I was glued to a book when I was forced away from the digital world, they may not be wrong there either.) > The internet is novelty manifest. There are single sites alone that can keep someone occupied for days. Content aggregation in the form of applications like Tik Tok, IG reels, YouTube shorts, and even HN have the ability of providing hours of content and then some by just refreshing the page or scrolling down. Is it, though? It's novelty manifest compared to the pre-Web (and pre social media) days. But that was 30 years ago, and the Internet sure looks a lot less novel when you compare it to the Internet in 2010. You think the iPad babies are going to find anything novel in TikTok? Of course not. Novelty requires constant change, or else it stops being novel. Not just in the content, but also in the delivery mechanism. Being raised on digital content consumption, I use TikTok but after being glued to it for 3-4 months, I picked out enough of the similarities in content that it started being boring. Another weakness of the current social media landscape that shows up the longer the audience has engaged is recycled content. For example, TT has figured out that I like history content. It has not figured out that I've been looking for stupid fun history tidbits for decades and I already know what it's showing me. "Did you know...?" YES. YES, I DID. It's informational blue balls. I spend too much time on TikTok, but I also spent too much time on LiveJournal, IRC, Usenet, Tumblr, and Reddit. Showing me something new is way harder than a random 13 year old. Another example is the phenomenon of how people who are porn addicts usually end up seeking out new and novel stimuli because eventually the same old gets boring. That still applies to TikTok: The people who want thirst traps will eventually stop being tickled by the 50th one because it's too similar and their dopamine receptors demand an upping of the ante. I basically have hope because the human organism requires change. And because human adolescents really like doing the opposite of what the last generation did. We're due for another Great Awakening and shit is going to get weird. If Millennials and Gen Z are obsessed with content consumption, our grandkids are going to rebel pretty hard. I expect some very strong social/cultural taboos around entertainment and content use will show up in a few decades.
- docandrew 4y agoI have to wonder if being constantly online is what’s _causing_ our ADHD and lack of a social spark.
- dageshi 4y agoI don't think it causes it. I do think it reinforces both if that's how you're inclined.
- Gnatworth 4y agoI think there were always people in history who just couldn’t make friends like others could, but now the internet is a (sort of) welcoming environment for those kinds of people born now. What incentive do they have to limit/replace the time they spend online? I’m still undecided with ADHD. I’m honestly inclined to say it’s also been around forever, but we only recently have a name for it and a way to identify those with it.
- paxys 4y agoI'm surprised that number is so low.
- softwaredoug 4y agoI'm going to play devils advocate Can we stop screentime shaming people? We have had an ongoing moral panic about screentime for about a decade. Screentime is so broad and vast it now covers anything from chatting with your grandma to get her spaghetti recipe to playing WoW nonstop in your underwear to learning how to code on Youtube to make yourself better and more productive to using a Peloton bike to workout. The youngest generation has it the worst with helicopter parents sitting over their kids shoulders, filling their lives with activities to "keep them off screens". Yet the kids themselves never learn how to set their own limits or navigate free time. We fail to prepare for independence as actual adults, and just create a lot of anxiety and shame around screens themselves.
- xyzzy_plugh 4y ago> with the kids themselves never learning how to set their own limits or prepare for independence as actual adults To some extent this is not how parenting works. This is like giving heroin to an addict and letting them learn to set their own limits unattended. In practice, supervising addiction helps control it. Kids need some kind of supervision. It's much harder to get a kid to reduce screentime if they're used to unlimited screentime.
- sillysaurusx 4y agoI had complete and total freedom over my internet usage as a kid. I watched plenty of dark stuff, had sexual interactions, and made close friends. I turned out fine. It’s hard to see the moderates in any given situation, almost by definition. That includes moderate outcomes. Comparing the internet to heroin isn’t a moderate take. Having freedom when I was a kid directly prepared me for the rest of my life.
- ouid 4y ago20k comment karma since 2019 seems like a lot of time on HN to me.
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- klooney 4y agoWatching parents at the park is a little sad. Lots of three and four year olds with an adult who never looks away from their phone.
- softwaredoug 4y agoI would withhold judgment. With a 3-4 year old, as a parent, I can tell you you may not know that they need a break. Or that they spent all morning interacting at home, and are just trying to get out of the house and the kid into a situation they can catch a breather. The _guilt_ I would feel looking at my phone as a parent is objectively unproductive when I look objectively at how much 1-1 time I have sunk into my kid. People need breaks, and if not the phone, it would be something else...
- warner25 4y agoI'm a parent to four little kids, and I've spent a ton of time at home with them over the last few years. When I take them to the park, it's often so that I can have a break, because it's a safe place for them to spread out and explore and interact with someone other than me, where I'm not constantly preventing them from breaking things or making a big mess. That's where I can take some time to read, or listen to something, or make a phone call. The other 11 hours of the day when they're awake and we're at home, I don't necessarily have time to do anything for myself on a screen. I'm not saying you're wrong. I suspect that you're right, in fact. But what's happening at the park might not be the best indicator.
- thenerdhead 4y agoI hate it, but I also have no problem being a transient parent who brings a little happiness to them while their parents are distracted. I wrote a book about this realization recently where I'd see a similar statistic of other parents at a park on their phone and not involved with their kids. Leave your phone at home, it's seriously that easy and you won't regret it.
- e-dant 4y ago> 44% of 18- to 49-year-olds say they go online almost constantly Depending on what people consider “going online,” this isn’t necessarily a problem. Being glued to an endless feed of clickbait and advertisements is probably unhealthy. Having a desktop running SETI in the background for the entire day probably isn’t. I wonder what people mean when they say “going online.”
- jt2190 4y ago> Other demographic groups that report almost always going online include college-educated adults, adults who live in higher-income households and urban residents. In other words self-reporting as “being online constantly” (whatever that means… TikTok or day trading?) correlates with more education, income, and ability to pay a higher rent.
- seydor 4y agoCan't blame them. Physical life is so full of trivialities
- jbverschoor 4y agoWhat happened to “they spend 4 hours online per day”? That always felt like a hugely underestimated figure
- Beaver117 4y agoThe industrial revolution and its consequences were a disaster for the human race
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- baremetal 4y agoI'll be spending 90% of my waking hours out at my farm starting probably next week depending on the weather. I feel sorry for people who don't get to experience 8am in an open field with the sun shining. Little rabbits bouncing around. The sweet smell of the grass. The earth between your toes. Dew-kissed field wakes, Morning sun, golden embrace, Birds trill, wind whispers, Nature's symphony begins, Soft grass, a canvas of peace.
- cableshaft 4y agoYou can get that without spending 90% of your time on a farm. I get most of that chilling out on the back patio in the morning (there's also a prairie just beyond our back fence). And then eventually the sun gets too bright for my computer screens and I have to go back inside to continue working. But good on you for taking an honest stab at full-time farm work. From what I hear it's gotten pretty difficult to make a living off of it, unless you have a huge farm and put millions of dollars into farm equipment (or you're otherwise retired and don't need much extra money). Hopefully it's the latter in your case :).
- baremetal 4y agoOh I don't try to make a living from it. I have other sources of income. I code in the winter months.
- Kye 4y agoSounds boring to me, but then what I do outside sounds boring to others. Such is life. I'd rather be out exploring with a camera. Perhaps even on a farm, documenting and finding the art in it. I'm happiest working with my hands, but that could be working a camera as easily as building something in Minecraft. The farming I've done (in real life!) wasn't very fulfilling.
- teaearlgraycold 4y agoThe farming I’ve done in Minecraft wasn’t fulfilling either.
- cableshaft 4y agoI'm on the computer almost constantly (although not quite, I do see friends, clean around the house, play/design board games, read books, walk and play with the dogs, etc), but that doesn't translate to always being online. Technically my computer is, but I might not be doing anything actively online. I might be coding something (which requires looking things up online, but only sometimes), or working on the graphic design in Illustrator for one of my board game designs, or composing music, or playing old tv shows I have copies of on my computer in the background while I do other things, etc. It still feels like I'm online a lot though, and a lot less productive in my personal projects than I could be. I keep trying to reduce it, but any effort I've made in the past doesn't seem to last very long.
- jameshart 4y agoWhat does ‘going online’ mean nowadays? It used to mean dialling up your modem to your ISP; you had to pay for it by the minute. Or for a business ‘going online’ meant getting a website and an email address set up - and once you’ve ‘gone online’ like that you’re online all the time. Social media account users are ‘always online’ in the sense that someone can always find them and interact with them… regardless of whether they’re using a device or even awake. Most information workers - even ones who still work in an office - ‘come online’ when they get to their desk and often remain ‘online’ for out-of-hours contact. So… what different people mean when they say they are ‘online constantly’ feels like it probably renders any conclusions you can draw from this kind of survey pretty thin.
- kylecazar 4y agoWondering the same. If being online constantly means connected to the internet and accessible, I'm guilty. If it means actively engaging with content, I doubt over 40% of adults are doing that 'almost constantly'. Constantly means something. It doesn't mean too much, or a lot, or an unhealthy amount -- it means almost the entirety of your time.
- HardwareLust 4y agoPew didn't define anything though. This is just the results of a survey where 31% picked the answer "Almost constantly".
- thenerdhead 4y agohttps://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Internet-Frequency-Update-Methodology-Topline.pdf https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Inter... > About how often do you use the internet? That's the definition.
- FromTheSteppe 4y agoI was hammered by my parent into an educational success machine. Now that's all I can do. I've been putting a considerable amount of my time into helping people for past 20 years, that doesn't mean people like to spend time with me outside work and studies. I didn't do, and didn't learn how to do actives growing up, it's just awkward to others and I when I try. I even cook 5 course meals and workout at home. Of course I'm going to be constantly online, games and forums are were I'm loved.
- sandworm101 4y agoThree in ten are online 24/7? I guess those are the 30% that are ready for all the employers that require them to be available 24/7. My job has me carrying three cellphone. At any moment I need to be able to respond and, on occasion, spend a great many uninterrupted hours in front of a screen processing information. A 24/7 online lifestyle for teenagers might be good training for those future jobs. (What it means for their mental health is beside the point.) I once had a conversation with a fighter pilot about what a good pilot candidate looks like. He said it would be someone who could drift a car around a corner while having conversation about a legal problem, while adjusting the radio, and not missing a beat as he pauses that conversation to answer a cellphone, all the while keeping an eye out for cops. Such people will not be the type to sit quietly in history class, but they might be those people who sit at a screen all day bouncing between a dozen different tasks.
- sixothree 4y agoIf you've seen any young people online, being able to concentrate on a task is not one of their strengths.
- CM30 4y agoWonder how those stats compare in other places? It feels to me at least like the numbers should be similar in places like the UK, mainland Europe, Canada, Australia, etc, but that's just based on my own personal acquaintances/bubble. Also kinda surprised it's that low, but hey, maybe it's just that the percentage of the population that's constantly online is louder than the rest of them, especially when it comes to social media.
- entropicgravity 4y agoIn the past adults were 'almost constantly' reading the paper or watching TV.
- knaik94 4y agoI think the moral panic, in part, comes from a strong cultural bias of valuing extroversion over introversion. The additional layer to that is the difference in how people understand the nuances of being online. The main arguments I have heard against my screen time is that it takes me away from meeting "real" people. The complexity of how people can interact with each other online is lost to them. Seeing different amounts of introversion from live streamers helped me understand this divide. For some people, the idea of staying in your room all day and playing video games sounds like one of the most isolating things you can do. The amount of other people you are playing with online doesn't make a difference. But from the other side, there's streamers that get consistently 1000+ concurrent viewers to every stream and they make an effort to interact with individuals over time. Not everyone is chatting, but even if 1% are, thats a group of 10 people constantly chatting. Should the steamer be considered introverted or extroverted. I think the difference between people who see screen time as good vs bad relates to whether they consider online interactions as social vs not. There is a large population of people that see any screen use as the same, but that comes from a place of not understanding the different uses of technology. The divide falls on generational lines because younger generations grew up using the internet and don't remember a "before". Those that didn't, and failed to adapt to social interactions moving online, feel nostalgic and see screen use as a "problem". I think younger generations also aren't valuing extraversion the same way older ones did because there is a better understanding of things like social anxiety and neurodevelopmental disorders. I used to be bothered a lot and got defensive when people tried to screen shame me, but I don't care anymore. I recognized it's just part of the cycle of new technology making people feel uncomfortable when they can't or choose not to adapt. The same divide happens over and over at different scales. Ebooks are a great example, paper vs computer, paper vs eink, eink vs computer, book vs movie vs audiobook. I just finished working my way through an excellent Youtube analysis series of Dune, there hours of a book club discussion with a content creator. As a deeply introverted person, even online discussions can feel exhausting. People that try to screen shame me demonstrate they have zero nuanced understanding of that.