Study: U.S. Web users increase online time

From...

by David Lake

(IDG) -- The world's largest Internet population just got bigger, according to a new study finding that half of U.S. adults now go online at least once a month.

Almost 100 million U.S. adults are now going online every month, according to New York-based Mediamark Research. That's half of American adults and a 27 percent increase over 1999 in the number who surf the Web.

Some researchers estimated that the adult Net population already had reached 50 percent penetration in late 1999. But those aggressive estimates often included adults who had used the Net only once or twice. Only in the last few months have researchers suggested that half of U.S. adults go online every month.

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According to Mediamark, which derives it numbers through personal interviews of more than 25,000 randomly selected Americans, 10 million more Net users are accessing the Web from work since last year, but the largest percentage of adults still go online from home. Seventy-nine percent of online adults -- 75 million people -- accessed the Web from home during the past 30 days. In 1999, only 55 million adults had done so.

There also appears to be a continuing gender shift in the number of American adults going online. In early 2000, Mediamark reported the milestone that women for the first time ever accounted for half of the online adult population. Now 51 percent of U.S. adult Web surfers -- some 50.6 million -- are women.

The study revealed other demographic shifts in Internet usage among American adults, as well. In 1999, only one-fourth of online adults had not attended college, whereas today, 30 percent of online adults are not college educated, suggesting that the online population is increasingly beginning to mirror the offline population. Likewise, the percentage of Net users who earn $75,000 or more has fallen, albeit minimally. Forty percent of online adults earn more than $75,000, down from 41 percent last year, according to Mediamark. Nevertheless, the Net remains dominated by the wealthy, as only 28 percent of the overall population falls in that salary range.

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The Net's alive and kicking, says study
(The Industry Standard)
Adults spending more time on Net than teens
(IDG.net)
New Net study has positive results
(The Industry Standard)
Young Net users dominate Brazil
(The Industry Standard)
Online gender gap narrows (somewhat)
(PCWorld.com)
Changing online demographics raises globalization issues
(InfoWorld.com)
The Net's a happy place, dammit
(The Industry Standard)
Research finds high level of satisfaction with Net
(Computerworld)

Mediamark Research, Inc.

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