You thought only those who couldn't afford computers are not seen in cyberspace? Think again, ladies and gentlemen. A growing number of cyberdropouts have joined the offline set because many fear cyberporn, credit card fraud, and identity theft, according to a new report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project.
Released April 16, "The Ever-Shifting Internet Population" said that 43 percent of those surveyed who claimed not to want or need the Internet worried about porn, credit card fraud, and theft as the major reason for staying out of cyberspace, while 17 percent said those taken together amounted to a minor reason for staying offline and 37 percent said they weren't factors at all.
Of that 43 percent, the report said, women, parents, Americans in general over age 30, and those with a high school education or less were the most likely to report concerns over "safety and unsavory content online," with whites more likely to express alarm over online content than minorities.
And while non-Netizens were more likely than Netizens - whatever those Netizens think about cyberporn or other entertainment - to think of the Internet as a peep show or a party, the report said, only one percent of those surveyed who admitted to dropping out of the Internet, rather than never having gone there, claimed porn had any influence on that decision.
"(A)n equally significant reason why people are not online is lack of desire...they do not want the Internet, do not feel that they need it, and do not feel that it holds anything of interest or value for them," the report concluded. "They believe they are not missing out on anything by not being online. For some, this disinterest is based on incorrect assumptions about online content, but for others it is a reasoned choice, based on personal preferences for communication style and information retrieval or past Internet experience."
In fact, the Pew report said, Internet dropouts actually have a more negative outlook on society in general than Netizens do, with almost half the Net dropouts surveyed saying they were not satisfied with life in these United States today, and more than half saying "that you can't be too careful in dealing with people," thinking most would take advantage of you if you gave them the chance.
But taken generally, the report said, the overall "divide" - if you want to call it that - between the on and the offline is simply today's version of the kind of reactions stirred by technology advances in several generations before the Internet was born.
"The Ever-Shifting Internet Population" - written by Amanda Lenhart, summarizing and analyzing research done by herself, John Horrigan, Lee Rainie, Katherine Allen, Angie Boyce, Mary Madden, and Erin O'Grady - surveyed 3,553 Americans by telephone as well as Washington and Baltimore focus groups. The report said the results show it likely that 42 percent of Americans (about 80 million people) claim not to be Netizens, but 20 percent of those live with others who do use the Net and 17 percent are former Netizens who dropped out for reasons other than safety, content, or economic concerns.
"Internet access is fluid for another reason," Lenhart said. "Between a quarter and half of current Internet users say they have dropped offline for an extended period of time at one point or another in their online life...the road to Internet use is paved with bumps and turnarounds."
And, about 56 percent of those the team surveyed say they will never go online - and not strictly for economic reasons. According to the report, 30 percent of non-Netizens say it's the cost, but almost a fifth of the non-Netizens say cost is a minor factor if anything - though 40 percent agreed that the Internet is too expensive, "up a tick from 2000," the report said. Those most likely to have cited cost were women, minorities, and the rural and urban poor.
Just less than a third of those surveyed among the non-Netizens told the Pew researchers that time was a prime factor. "Time crunches," the report said, "are more likely to affect younger Americans, and those earning greater incomes, those with less education, as well as those living in rural areas," Lenhart said, with parents more likely than non-parents likely to find time mitigating against their using the Net.
But some non-Netizens admitted that, for themselves, the Internet was simply hard to use, and that they might not really be able to learn how to use it. The Pew report said a quarter of those surveyed on the question said the Internet's real or alleged complexity was a prime reason why they stayed away from cyberspace, while one unidentified woman suggested she might be able to learn it if she could do so in a small class environment like a computer technology center. And, whites and blacks were shown to be more likely than Hispanics to say the complexities kept them offline - the Hispanic users surveyed said the complexity was a minor reason at best.
So what do the non-Netizens think about the Internet and its denizens anyway? Most agreed that e-mail helps people keep in contact, and most also agreed the Internet might help them learn about things more easily. But when asked if they thought the Internet was "a dangerous thing," 29 percent strongly agreed, 27 percent agreed "somewhat," 15 percent disagreed "somewhat," and 17 percent disagreed strongly, the report said.
And only 16 percent agreed strongly that they were missing out on things by not having Internet and e-mail access, compared to 36 percent who disagreed strongly.
But among the non-users surveyed, a strong enough majority (31 percent) said they would use the Internet primarily for general research. That was the largest result by far regarding eight specific purpose responses, with e-mail and instant messaging placing a distant enough second (11 percent), shopping (7 percent) third, and general Web surfing (6 percent), reading news or sports (4 percent), research for school or work (3 percent), playing games (2 percent), or research geneaology (1 percent). The ninth purpose response, "Something else," had 12 percent saying they would do that - though it didn't suggest what "something else" might be.
Meanwhile, among the non-Netizens, the Pew report said "a disproportionately high number" are parents - 66 percent of those surveyed, in fact, a number which in theory could alarm those concerned that children are getting access too readily to cyberporn and other "objectionable" Websites.
"It is probable," Lenhart wrote, "that the Net Evader in the home depends on his children who use the Internet to do the few online chores that might be convenient and useful to the Net Evader. It also might be the case that the Net Evader has decided not to battle others in the family for access to the Internet-connected computer."
For former Netizens who are now offline and not likely to return to cyberspace soon, the report said, the reasons vary. A majority of former Netizens (19 percent) surveyed said they no longer owned or had access to a computer. Below that, an almost even number of Net dropouts said they didn't like or want the Net or found it uninteresting (13 percent) or didn't have time to use the Net (12 percent).
Nine percent cited relocation that cost them local Net access, while eight percent said they could no longer get to where they did have Net access. Six percent cited computer malfunction, five percent cited Internet connection trouble. Five percent also said they didn't need the Internet, and five percent also said their job change or loss cost them Net access since they had access on the job. The rest divided among the cost of the Internet (five percent), disability or illness keeping them offline (two percent), and confusion, privacy concerns, porn, or difficulty to use (one percent each).
"The idea of a digital divide, defined by the simple idea of people being either on or offline, is a less accurate way of understanding adoption of the Internet than the idea of a spectrum of access," Lenhart wrote. "There is unevenness in people's use and non-use of the Internet and there seems to be great fluidity in the Internet population itself...The 'sometimes on/sometimes off' character of Internet use by many Americans is consistent with historical patterns of technology adoption."
