Internet Penetration Increases To 66% of Adults.

The online population has grown at a modest rate over the last six months after a pause which coincided with the bursting of the dot.com bubble. According to the latest data from The Harris Poll, fully two-thirds (66%) of all adults are now online. This includes more than half (55%) of all adults who access the Internet from home, almost a third (30%) who access it from work, and almost one in five adults who go online from a school, library, cyber cafe or other location. Of course, some people are online from two or more places.

These numbers show a modest increase in Internet penetration since last fall. Those online from any location are up from 64% to 66%; those online from home are up from 52% to 55%; those online at work are up from 28% to 30%, and those online at another location are unchanged at 19%.

These are the results of a nationwide Harris InteractiveSM survey conducted by telephone with a sample of 2,038 adults in February and March of this year. The 66% of adults now online comprise 137 million, up from 127 million last fall.

This new growth in the Internet population comes after a six-month period, from spring 2001 until fall 2001 when there was no growth. Presumably this pause in online growth was the result of a slowing economy and the loss of some of the magic of the Internet following the collapse of the dot.com investment bubble.

The profile of Internet users still has a bias towards the more affluent, better educated consumers, but the profile by age is looking more like a cross section of all adults – up to, but not including, those over 65, who comprise 16% of all adults but only 5% of those online.

One other interesting finding in this research is that there has been little change in the amount of time Internet users spend online. On every occasion we have measured it, they have been spending seven or eight hours online each week. A reasonable assumption however is that as technology and Internet skills have improved, people can get more done now in the seven or eight hours they spend online than they could have a few years ago.

For access to the complete data tables for this survey, please go to:
http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=295