“When I took office, only high energy physicists had ever heard of what is called the World Wide Web. Now, even my cat has it’s own page.” – Former United States President Bill Clinton, announcement of the Next Generation Internet Initiative, 1996
“Pics or it didn’t happen.” – Unspoken agreed upon rule of social media users of the 20th century.
The “media” has been around since the dawn of time.
According to the findings of a 2003 survey of adults conducted via telephone by the Princeton Survey Research Associates, Internet usage is incredibly important to Americans during their daily lives:
- 88% of online Americans say the Internet plays a role in their daily routines. Of those, one-third say it plays a major role, and two-thirds say it plays a minor role.
- 64% of Internet users say their daily routines and activities would be affected if they could no longer use the Internet.
- 53% of Internet users say they do more of certain everyday activities simply because they can do them on the Internet. The most popular are communicating with family and friends and looking up information.
- 92% of Internet users say the Internet is a good place to go for getting everyday information.
- 85% say the Internet is a good way to communicate or interact with others.
- 75% say the Internet is a good place to conduct everyday transactions.
- 69% say the Internet is a good way to entertain themselves in everyday life.
The Miniwatts Marketing Group, using information provided by the National Census Bureau, Nielsen Online, the International Telecommunications Union, and GfK, reports that as of October 2012, that world-wide internet usage has jumped from 16 million in December of 1995 (Recorded by the IDC) to 2.4 billion (recorded by the Miniwatts Marketing Group). The group also reports that the top ten Languages spoken by Internet users are: English, Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese, German, Arabic, French, Russian, and Korean. These languages represent 1.61 of the 2.4 billion users today.
Internet use worldwide, 2012
Just a funny baby pic of Google (as it was originally created as a prototype by Sergey Brin and Larry Page in 1996):
As compare to now:
Google is now used to search the Internet over 7.2 billion times a day.
What about TV?
According to the Pew Research Center:
- The average American watches 20 hours of television per week, with higher rates in lower socioeconomic classes.
- African-American households, in general, watch more television than other groups in the U.S. African-Americans watch, on average, two more hours of primetime television per week and watch close to five more hours of daytime television per week.
- 75% of smart-TV owners who connect their set to the Internet watch on-demand online programming.
- Among them, 71% watch online TV shows at least monthly, compared with 51% in 2011, and approximately a third watch movies and TV shows daily.
- Internet-connectable TV shipments increased from less than 1% in 2008 to 45% in 2012.
As well as the use of smart TV’s the use of “Time shifted” (the ability to watch or listen to a program at the consumer’s convenience) TV has increased too:
These new advances in technology have made it much easier for a “on the go” person to be able to enjoy their favorite Tv shows, movies, and news programs on their own time.
The Nielsen Company has done countless research projects, and is literally controlling what is on TV through collecting and analyzing statistics provided by consumers throughout the country. They have even discovered that TV viewing patterns in the US tend to be seasonal, with TV usage higher in the winter months and lower in the summer months.
The Pew Internet and American Life Project is currently releasing a number of reports about Internet use. These reports are based on data from surveys conducted last summer (July through September 2009) with 800 adolescents and 2,253 adults.
As these statistics show, while it is believed that our parents are “technologically challenged” they are in fact at the same speed as most of us, and probably will surpass us in the next few years.
All current studies show that Internet and TV daily usage is on the rise and is changing the way that most people conduct their lives. Without the accessibility that we have today, most people believe that they would not be able to live their lives in the way that they do.