For those of us who worry about spending too much of our work and free time connected to the World Wide Web, this may sound incredible: of the 15 percent of American adults who are usually offline, the largest percentage of them shun the internet because they don't find it relevant to their lives.
That's according to a new survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, which found that 34 percent of adults who are not online "are not interested, do not want to use it, or have no need for it."
However, other reasons for being offline taken together outweigh the apathetic luddites in the survey: 32 percent of non-internet users cite that the Internet is not very easy to use (or too laden with spam, hackers, and threats to privacy) and 19 percent say its simply too expensive to access. Another 7 percent said that a physical lack of availability or access to the internet is keeping them offline. And those reasons, often referred to as the culprit behind the "digital divide" are disproportionately affecting the Latino community.
Relevance vs Usability, Price, and Access
As one might expect, internet use has historically correlated strongly with both age and household income, and the same is true here. Up to 44 percent of Americans 65 years of age or older do not use the internet, making up almost half of the offline community. That figure skyrockets when you talk to only adults 77 years or older, who don't use the internet or email at a rate of 62 percent.
The relevance and usability figures are certainly weighed heavily by the senior citizen contingent, 66 percent of whom say they would need help getting online and only 5 percent of whom say they would want to start using the internet in any case. However, 44 percent of all non-internet users have someone in touch that is online, whom they have asked to look something up or complete a task on the internet for them.
One Fourth of Hispanic Adults Still Not Online
Pew's survey found that 24 percent of Hispanic adults (English- and Spanish-speaking) were not online, which is a statistically significant disproportionate rate, compared to Black, Non-Hispanics at 15 percent and White, Non-Hispanics at 14 percent.
To get a sense of whether relevance, usability, or accessibility were the issue behind this, Pew asked about home internet use. They found that only 63 percent of Latinos use the internet from home, compared to the average of 76 percent. And a full 13 percent of online Latinos get on the web through their smartphones or other means: they do not have internet access from home.
The main reasons behind why users don't go online at home were the familiar problems of the digital divide. A total of 20 percent of internet users who don't have a connection at home said that they didn't have a computer or that a computer would be too expensive. Other reasons included the expense of an interent connection or difficulty setting it up.
When these reasons were tallied up into relevance, price, or usability, 42 percent of the answers related to the cost of having the internet.
Despite the fascinating contingent of non-internet users who just don't seem to care about accessing it, the survey more importantly reveals that the cost and complications of internet access are still the main culprits keeping people from getting online - especially Latinos.
The Pew study, which was based on telephone interviews conducted in both English and Spanish between April 17 and May 19, 2013 contains a whole lot more detail about internet access through dial-up, as well as a breakdown of internet users into educational attainment, household income, and location. Check it out here.