-By Mark Dolliver, Adweek
With so many Americans already using the Internet, we're past the
point of seeing massive increases in the percentage of the
population that's wired. However, this masks a steep increase in
the past few years in the proportion of people who spend a
significant amount of time online.
In a
Gallup poll of adults released last week (based on
polling fielded in December), 48 percent of respondents said they
spend more than an hour a day using the Internet. That's up from 43
percent saying the same the previous year and from 33 percent
saying so as recently as 2005.
Just in the past year, there have been significant increases in
more-than-an-hour-a-day Internet use by people with income under
$30,000 (from 22 percent to 32 percent), unmarried people (from 38
percent to 48 percent), 18-29-year-olds (from 50 percent to 62
percent) and people with a post-graduate education (from 56 percent
to 68 percent). Though Americans in the 65-plus age bracket still
lag behind younger age cohorts in heavy Internet usage, the number
saying they're online more than an hour a day rose briskly, from 14
percent to 23 percent.
Cutting against the generally upward trend were downticks among
respondents with income of $75,000-plus (from 65 percent to 63
percent) and 30-49-year-olds (from 56 percent to 54 percent). More
surprising was a statistically significant downturn among college
graduates (from 56 percent to 51 percent).
There was also a notable gender gap in the findings: While the
number of men using the Internet more than an hour a day rose from
44 percent to 53 percent, the number of women doing so was
essentially flat (41 percent in December 2007, 42 percent in
December 2008).
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