Four Out of Five Adults Now Use the Internet

ROCHESTER, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--In 1995, when The Harris Poll® began measuring online activity, less than 18 million adults used the Internet in their homes, offices, schools, libraries or other locations. Now, thirteen years, later, fully 184 million adults are online.

The proportion of adults online trebled between 1995 (9%) and 1997 (30%), and kept on climbing rapidly to 63% in 2000. Since then growth has been slower, reading 73% in 2004 and 81% now.

These are some of the results of The Harris Poll, a new nationwide survey of 2,020 U.S. adults surveyed by telephone between October 16 and 20, 2008 and October 30 and November 2, 2008 by Harris Interactive^®.

Many People Go Online at Two or More Locations

While most people (75%), and almost all those who use the Internet, use it at home, more than two out of five adults (43%) go online at work and a third (32%) do so at other locations (schools, cybercafés, libraries, etc.)

Internet Users Are Spending More Time Online

Until 2002, Internet users spent an average of seven or eight hours online per week. That has increased to nine hours in 2005, eleven hours in 2007 and to fully fourteen hours in this new survey.

Virtually all Computer Users are Now Online

Before 1998, less than half of the people who used computers also used the Internet. Over the last ten years, that has increased steadily. Today only two percent of computer users do not go online.

Demographic Profile of the Online Population Looks More Like the Whole Population

In the early days of the Internet revolution, most of those online were young and well-educated. As the online population has grown it has come to look more and more like the population of the country. Internet penetration is still somewhat lower among people over 65, people who never went to college and people with household incomes of less than $25,000, but large majorities of all of these demographic groups are now online.

So What?

The internet revolution continues. The online population continues to grow and to use the Internet for more hours than ever before. Initially the Internet was used to do things we did before but to do them better, faster or cheaper. Now it is increasingly being used to so new things we could not do before which were prohibitively expensive or difficult.

As Roy Amara once said of the growth of new technologies, “There is a tendency to overestimate their short-term impact and to underestimate long-term impact.” The Internet now touches many parts of our lives. With each new year we use it, and depend on it more for communication, information, work, shopping, and entertainment.

In the election, Barack Obama and the Democrats used the Internet to drive their campaign, to communicate with many millions of people, to raise unprecedented amounts of money and to motivate and turn out their supporters. There is now talk of using these systems to enable the president-elect and his administration to communicate directly with the public and by-pass the traditional media.

We may still be at the dawn of the age of the Internet.

Methodology

The Harris Poll^® was conducted by telephone within the United States in October 2008 (October 16 and 20, 2008) and October 2008 (October 30 and November 2, 2008) among 2,020 adults (aged 18 and over). Figures for age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, region, number of adults in the household, size of place (urbanicity) and number of phone lines in the household were weighted where necessary to bring them into line with their actual proportions in the population. Full data tables and methodology for this study are available at www.Harrisinteractive.com.

These statements conform to the principles of disclosure of the National Council on Public Polls.

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About Harris Interactive

Harris Interactive is a global leader in custom market research. With a long and rich history in multimodal research, powered by our science and technology, we assist clients in achieving business results. Harris Interactive serves clients globally through our North American, European and Asian offices and a network of independent market research firms. For more information, please visit www.harrisinteractive.com.

Harris Interactive Inc. 11/08