The Internet may be phenomenally popular nowadays, but that still isn’t translating to an integration of the Net into everyday life equal to its popularity, according to a new study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
Most Netizens, according to the new study released August 11, continue “defaulting” to traditional offline ways of communication, transaction, information, and entertainment, according to the study’s author, Pew senior research fellow Deborah Fallows.
“Two different measures suggest that, overall, the virtual world of the Internet still takes second place to the real world as the place to accomplish daily tasks or enjoy recreation,” Fallows wrote. “First, among the many Internet users who toggle between the offline and online worlds for activities, most use the “real world” alternative rather than the online alternative. For example, Internet users buy movie tickets more often at the box office than buy them online.
“Second, when Internet users do a certain activity exclusively in one realm, more will still do it exclusively offline than exclusively online,” she continued. “For example, among Internet users who ever look for sports scores, almost twice as many will look for them exclusively offline as exclusively online. Of Internet users who ever look up addresses or phone numbers, many more will use phone books than online sources to get this information.”
The Pew study showed 46 percent of those game-playing Netizens who responded to the survey play games online, while 34 percent with hobbies go to the Web to pursue them, 23 percent who listen to music or radio regularly do it online, 18 percent who read for pleasure will read online, and 16 percent of those who watch videos, movie previews, or cartoons do it in cyberspace.
Fallows said that even those Netizens who are very comfortable in cyberspace prefer offline to online for things like news gathering, buying tickets, or banking and other financial transactions.
The study showed 45 percent of respondents who get the news get it on and offline, but a whopping 71 percent get it more often from the newspaper, the radio, and television news, compared to 22 percent who get it on the Web more often. Of the 27 percent of respondents who buy tickets on and offline, 57 percent buy more often by telephone, mail, or at the box office, compared to 27 percent buying online. And, among the 26 percent of respondents who bank or pay bills online, 54 percent do it offline and 34 percent do it online.
The one noted exception, Fallows noted, was looking for the right way to travel somewhere. Netizens looking for maps or driving directions did it more exclusively online than off, 56 percent of respondents doing it online exclusively and 14 percent doing it offline exclusively. Among 39 percent of respondents who do it both ways, the study said, 48 percent of those do it more often in cyberspace over 40 percent who do it more often offline.
However, the numbers of those who do integrate the Internet more fully into their daily lives continues to grow. Thirty percent of the Netizens who responded to the Pew survey said the Internet plays a major role in their daily lives, do more everyday activities online and more frequently, and are becoming more likely to do them online exclusively, Fallows said.
