Daily Web
Surfing Now the Norm
By Dru Sefton, Special for USA TODAY
©
03/22/00- Updated 11:54 AM ET
Logging onto the Internet is becoming
an essential daily activity for many Americans,
according to the latest research in an ongoing study of
Web usage.
More than 61% of home Internet users
go online every day - often several times a day -
compared with 46.7% in mid-1997 and 57.3% at the end of
1998, says the study, out Wednesday from Strategis
Group, a market research and consulting firm based in
Washington, D.C.
"We're becoming accustomed to
having information at our fingertips," says John
Zahurancik, vice president for broadband research at
Strategis.
"Where we used to call 12
airlines to compare ticket prices, now we go onto
Travelocity or Yahoo! or Expedia, and we can play with
the schedule and see the different fares,"
Zahurancik says.
Another way of looking at it: Where
people once performed tasks in an "analog"
fashion, he says - such as phoning a movie theater and
listening to a long recording to hear the show times for
a movie - now they're hopping onto the Net and finding
what they need faster. And they're becoming more
comfortable with that.
The findings suggest that the average
Internet user has 1.5 computers at home. Soon, a
multiple-computer household will be as common as a
two-car family. "We're heading there very
quickly," Zahurancik says, especially with the drop
in PC prices and the increase in the use of
Internet-only appliances.
Meanwhile, the amount of time the
average home Internet user spends online - 7.2 hours a
week - is not significantly different from the total in
1998, according to Strategis.
Among other findings:
The number of Internet users in the
nation has shot up to 106 million, more than 52% of
American adults. That compares with 52.6 million in
mid-1997 and 83.6 million at the end of 1998.
Men remain a slight majority, at 55
million users, compared with 51 million women. But women
continue to arrive online at an amazing rate: 16.5% of
women were online in mid-1997; by late 1999, that figure
was up to 49%.
The proportion of black American users
is up slightly from previous surveys, from 8% to 9% of
all users. But they're still underrepresented on the Net
- blacks represent 11.5% of the U.S. population.
The average age of Net users hit 40 at
the end of last year, having risen steadily from 38.6
years old in mid-1997.
The proportion of those considered
Internet "veterans" - having three or more
years of experience online - has nearly doubled, from
22.5% in mid-1997 to 44.9% at the end of 1999. The
percentage with less than one year of experience has
plunged from 37.1% to 18.8%.
About 58 million Americans use the
Internet at work, a decrease from 61 million in
mid-1999. Zahurancik links that drop to a rise in home
use, from 34.4% at the end of 1998 to 48.4% a year
later. "People probably are finding there's not
much use for it in a work capacity," he says, and
are moving their Web activities to after business hours.
Instant messaging continues to grow in
popularity. Nearly 1 billion messages are exchanged each
day in real time.
The number of Internet users making
purchases online has nearly doubled in the past year,
from 27 million to 52 million.
Strategis conducted its latest
telephone survey Dec. 10-13, speaking with 501 Internet
users and 500 non-users. Statistics are updated every
six months with new participants. The margin of error is
plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.
Related Links:
www.strategisgroup.com
www.cyberatlas.com
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