Regional variations in Internet use mirror differences in educational and income levels

Internet penetration continues to be unevenly distributed across the country.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project has tracked the growth of Internet usage in the United States, from just under half of American adults in 2000 to about 59% of adults at the end of 2002. These statistics have continually shown that Internet penetration in the United States has been and continues to be uneven. We have discussed in other reports why this growth has not been evenly distributed among those in various racial and ethnic groups, those of various ages, and among those with different levels of education and income. This report explores the reasons behind the uneven distribution of Internet penetration by geographical region.  And it looks at variations in use of the Internet by region. The following table outlines the disparities in Internet penetration among 12 regions of the country in 2002. (California is considered separately because Internet access and use vary dramatically from neighboring states.)

There are several notable variances among regions:

• The regions of the country with the highest rates of Internet penetration are along the Atlantic seaboard (New England with 66% of the adult population using the Internet and the Capital region with 64% using the Internet) as well as the Pacific seaboard (the Pacific Northwest with 68% online and California with 65% Internet penetration).
• Relatively high rates of Internet usage are also found in the Rocky Mountain States (64%) as well as in the Border States (60%).
• Internet usage has lagged somewhat in states in the Southeast (57%) and Industrial Midwest (55%).
• The region of the country that is far behind the other regions in using the Internet has been the South (48%).

Regional variations in Internet use reflect differences in education and income levels.

The cause of the regional variations in Internet use in the United States lies in the traditional factors that drive Internet use: education and income levels.¹ Those regions that have more people with substantial household incomes and college degrees tend to have both a higher proportion of Internet users in general and a higher proportion of experienced Internet users.

California, the National Capital region, and New England have large populations of wealthy, highly educated people. No surprise, then, that these regions are among the most highly wired regions in the country, with 64%-66% of adults online.

At the other end of the scale, the South has the lowest household income and education levels among its overall population compared to other regions and therefore it has the lowest level of Internet penetration among adults.

There are some exceptions, though. Both the Mountain States and the Pacific Northwest have large user populations even though they have proportionally fewer people with high household incomes and college degrees.

The race, age, and gender of Internet users also exhibit some distinct regional variations.

There are some interesting differences between the regions in the demographic makeup of their Internet populations. Some of these differences are to be expected, but several are somewhat surprising:

• California has the largest proportion of minority Internet users in the country: 38% are minorities and fully 21% are Hispanic.² To put this in perspective, minorities comprise 44% of California’s total population and Hispanics make up 26%.
• The National Capital region has the largest proportion of African-American users in the country (17%). This reflects the relatively high overall socioeconomic profile of African-Americans in the region.
• The Upper Midwest has the smallest proportion of minority users in the country. Just 7% of the region’s Internet users are black or Hispanic, compared to 4% of the overall population.
• The largest proportion of female users is in the Mid-Atlantic (54%); the largest proportion of male users is in New England (55%). Nationally, the user population is 50-50.
• The country’s youngest users can be found in California, the Mountain States, and the Lower Midwest. Its oldest users can be found in the Pacific Northwest.

Some online activities such as email are universally popular, but others, including online shopping, are favored only in certain regions.

Some online activities are universally popular across the country. These include using email, going online for hobby information, and using search engines to seek basic information. However, some online activities are favored more in some parts of the country than in others. Internet experience levels play an important role in these regional variations: more experienced users are more purposeful in their Internet use and less likely to browse for fun. Some highlights:

• Midwesterners are disproportionately interested in getting their news online. Users in the Mountain States, on the other hand, are not avid online news consumers.
• Compared to other regions, a high proportion of those in the South look for health information online.
• Those using the Web in the Pacific Northwest and in California are the least likely to spend time simply browsing the Internet for fun, probably because they are more likely to have a lot of Internet experience. On the other hand, those from all three midwestern regions are quite interested in going online just for fun.
• Users in New England and California are most likely to shop online. Those in the South and Southeast are the least likely to do so.

Experienced Internet users throughout the country log on more often during the day but limit their time online.

There are some national trends in the way people use the Internet on a daily basis. In particular, experienced users nationwide are more likely to go online on any given day and they tend to go online more often during the day, but they are also likely to limit their online time. There are also some slight variations in Internet usage in different regions of the country, however, and these relate primarily to where people log on (home versus work) and how regularly they use the Internet:

• Users in the Pacific Northwest are the most likely to go online on a typical day; those in the South are the least likely.
• Mountain States users are the most likely to have home-based Internet connections, while users in California are the most likely to have work-based Internet connections. Meanwhile, users in the National Capital region are the most likely to go online at the office on an average day, while users in the Northwest are most likely to do so from home.
• National Capital users are the most likely to log on several times a day.
• Users in the Pacific Northwest are the most likely to spend thirty minutes or less online on an average day. Users in California and the National Capital region are the most likely to have spent four or more hours online.
• California has the highest rate of broadband use; the Mountain States have the lowest.

Each region has its own online character.

• New England: Wealthier, more educated, and more likely to shop and search for answers online

There are proportionally fewer young adults (ages 18-24) online in New England (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont) but proportionally more men than women (55% of Internet users) than in other parts of the country. Overall, online New Englanders are wealthier and more educated than the national average. New Englanders are among the most likely in the nation to go online on an average day, and they like to buy things online. At the same time, however, they are among the least likely to report that the Internet has helped their ability to shop. New England’s Internet users are also more likely to have gone online to try to find the answer to a question — 89%, which is a higher proportion than in any other region of the country.

• Mid-Atlantic: Online shoppers and hobbyists

Growth in Internet usage among adults in the Mid-Atlantic (Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania) leveled off between 2001 and 2002, staying at 58% for both years. (This still represents notable growth from 2000, when 51% of adults used the Internet.) This region has the highest proportion of female Internet users (54%) of any in the country. A high proportion of Mid-Atlantic users have college or graduate degrees (38%). Online residents of the Mid-Atlantic like to use the Internet to look for hobby information and are more likely to shop online than those in most other parts of the country. They also enjoy surfing the Web, but are not as likely as those in other regions to turn to the Internet for answers to specific questions.

• National Capital Region: Enthusiastic, experienced users who log on from work

Users in the nation’s capital area (Maryland, Virginia, Washington D.C.) are among the most experienced users in the entire country. They are wealthier and more educated than the national average. They include the highest population of African-American Internet users in the nation (17%).

About 52% of those who use the Internet at work connect on an average day, the greatest proportion of workplace access of any region. Conversely, the region has the lowest rate of daily home Internet use. These users are more likely than their peers elsewhere in the nation to get news online, look for financial information, or seek help with their health. But they are the least likely to look up answers to questions.

This region’s Internet users are probably the most enthusiastic in the country about the impact of the Internet on their lives.

• Southeast: Home-based users who focus on family and friends

The user population in the Southeast (Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina) is an interesting mix of Web veterans and novices. This region has one of the more racially and ethnically diverse user groups in the country.

On an average day, 80% of those who go online in the Southeast do so from home—one of the highest rates of daily home access in the country and second only to the Pacific Northwest. These users feel more strongly than most others that the Internet has been a boon to their relationships with family and friends. They are among the least likely to shop online. And they are the least likely to look for information about hobbies online.

• South: Surfers in search of fun, news, and health information

The South (Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and West Virginia) has the lowest rate of Internet access of any region in the United States and is the only region with fewer than half of adults online (48% of Southern adults used the Internet as of 2002). In just about every demographic category, including income, age, and education, Southerners are less likely to use the Internet than their peers. However, the region has a large proportion of African-American users (14% of those in the South who use the Internet are black, compared to the national average of 8%). The act of surfing the Web just for fun is quite popular among users in the South, as is getting news online. And users in the South are the most likely in the nation to have sought health information online. Southerners are split on whether or not the Internet has been a benefit to their relationships, especially with family.

• Industrial Midwest: Many novices who use the Internet to keep in touch with friends

Internet usage in the Industrial Midwest (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio) grew only 1 percentage point between 2001 and 2002, after a 6-point increase between 2000 and 2001. Even so, this region has one of the largest cohorts of novice users (those with 6 months or less experience) in the country. A slightly higher proportion of women than men in the region use the Internet.

Users here are firmly in the middle when it comes to most of the popular Internet activities. And they are fairly reserved when asked whether the Internet has improved their quality of life in specific ways, such as shopping, managing finances, or pursuing a hobby. Only 27% said the Internet has helped them improve relationships with family members – one of the smallest percentages in the country. They are more apt to give the Internet credit for helping them keep in touch with friends (55% say it has helped a lot or somewhat).

• Upper Midwest: Middle-aged, educated, and lukewarm about the Net

Adult Internet use in the Upper Midwest (Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin) has grown strongly and steadily, from 49% in 2000, to 55% in 2001, to 59% in 2002. This region has the largest percentage of users with 1-3 years of experience online.

Users in this region are more educated than the national average, and a high proportion are aged 35 to 54. However, the region has one of the nation’s smallest proportions of younger users (aged 18 to 24).

Upper Midwesterners are much less likely than other Americans to credit the Internet with making improvements in their lives. They are even lukewarm about the Internet’s impact on improving their connections with family and friends.

• Lower Midwest: Older, lower-income adults who use the Internet for fun

The Lower Midwest (Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma) has the highest proportion of low-household income users of any region in the country and the highest proportion of seniors. Yet these users as a group are more educated than the national average. Lower Midwesterners are among the most ready consumers of online news and are the most likely of any in the country to go online “just for fun.” Like their neighbors peers in the Upper Midwest, this group of users tends to be lukewarm in their assessment of how the Internet has improved their lives.

• Border States: Enthusiastic users with highly varied backgrounds

The Border States area (Arizona, New Mexico, Texas) is one of the most wired regions in the country. There is an interesting mix of users who are wealthy and users who earn modest incomes, but in general, these Internet users have less education and lower household incomes than the national average. Like California, the Border States region has a high concentration of Hispanic users.

Users in the Southwest are among the most likely to get news online. They are also more likely to use the Internet for job research than those in other parts of the country. Those who go online here are very enthusiastic about the positive effects of the Internet on their lives.

• Mountain States: Experienced, home-based users

This region is one of the most wired in the country with 64% of adults online, and Internet users in the Mountain States (Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming) are among the most experienced online. The Mountain States have the highest rate of home access to the Internet of any region in the country. The region has one of the smallest proportions of wealthy Internet users and a user population with average education levels. The region has the largest proportion of female users and one of the smallest cohorts of African-American users.

Except for email, users in the Rockies tend to engage in the most popular online activities with less frequency than their peers nationwide.

• Pacific Northwest: Older, experienced, efficient Web users

The Pacific Northwest (Oregon, Washington) has been the most wired regions in the country for years. In 2002, fully 68% of adults were online. The region also has one of the largest cohorts of older users (aged 55+).

The region’s Internet users are experienced and are efficient when they are online – they are most likely to spend thirty minutes or less online on an average day than are users in other parts of the country. They are also less likely than their peers elsewhere to engage in many of the Web’s more popular activities, with the exception of email.

• California: Experienced users with high-speed connections who shop and pursue their hobbies online

California’s Internet users make up one of the most experienced regional user populations in the country. They also include the nation’s largest proportion of minority users (38% of the Internet population in the state). This figure includes the highest proportion of Hispanic Internet users in the country. At the same time, users in Californian are among the wealthiest and most educated in the country. California is particularly well served by high-speed Internet access and leads the nation in the use of broadband. Californians are the most likely in the nation to buy something online as well to seek hobby information online.

Note: There are two data spreadsheets available with this report:

• The first spreadsheet with all the regional data can be found at: https://alpha.pewresearch.org/pewresearch-org/internet/releases/release.asp?id=66
• The second spreadsheet of the 25 most popular Web sites for the key metropolitan areas in each region can be found at: https://alpha.pewresearch.org/pewresearch-org/internet/releases/release.asp?id=66

New England is one of the most wired regions in the United States, but there are proportionally fewer young adults online here than elsewhere.

New England is one of the most wired regions in the United States, with 66% of adults online. Internet users in the six New England states (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont) stand out against those in other regions of the country for several reasons:

• They are wealthier and more educated than the national average.
• They include more men than women (55% to 45%); nationally, there is an even split.
• There are proportionally fewer young adults online in New England than in other regions, particularly California.
• New Englanders are among the most likely in the nation to go online on an average day.
• New Englanders like to buy things online (although somewhat paradoxically they are among the least likely groups to say that the Internet has improved their ability to shop).
• And 89% of New England’s Internet users have gone online to try to find the answer to a question — a higher proportion than in any other region of the country.

There was a significant increase in the percentage of New England adults online and the region continues to be among the most wired in the country.

In 2002, as in 2001, adult New Englanders were among the most wired groups in the United States. About 66% of New Englanders in 2002 were online, a significant increase from the 59% of adults online in 2001. Both these instances are well above the national averages of 59% of adults online in 2002 and 56% of adults in 2001. The story was much the same in 2000. About 55% of New Englanders had used the Internet then, about 5 percentage points higher than the national average.

New England Internet users are experienced, relatively wealthy, and well educated, and more men are online than women.

New England has one of the country’s most experienced user populations. About 45% are Web veterans with more than 3 years’ online experience, and 36% have two or more years online. About 19% have a year’s experience or less. The proportions of users in New England with lots of experience are in line with the national proportions. Nationally, about 44% of users have more than three years online, and another 34% have two or more years on the Internet. Only a few regions of the country (California, the Capital Region, the Pacific Northwest and the Mountain States) have a higher proportion of veterans. About 5% of users in New England are Internet rookies with less than six months of online experience, and only the Capital region has a smaller proportion of Internet rookies.

New Englanders who go online are also among the country’s wealthiest and most educated Internet users. In 2001, the New England region ranked highest in the country for both income and education levels among Internet users. Fully 33% of Internet users in New England had household incomes of over $75,000 a year, compared with about 23% of users in the United States, and is the largest such cohort of users in the country. In New England in 2001, 15% of Web users earned between $50,000 and $75,000 a year, with 21% earning between $30,000 and $50,000, and 16% earning less than $30,000.³ New England has the smallest proportion of low-household income (under $30,000) users in the country. At the same time, a higher percentage (43%) of low income New Englanders have been online as compared to 38% of all low income Americans. Nationally, 17% of users earned between $50,000 and $75,000 a year, another 23% earned between $30,000 and $50,000, and 21% of users took home less than $30,000.

Internet users in New England are among the most educated users in America. The New England region, according to our 2001 data, ranks No. 1 in the share of college-educated users, just ahead of the National Capital region. Fully 41% of users in New England have a college bachelor’s or advanced degree. This is 5 percentage points higher than the total proportion of users in the country with a similar level of education (36%). Meanwhile, 23% of New England users in 2001 had some college experience, another 30% possessed a high school diploma, and about 6% of adult users did not have a high school diploma. However, almost a third (30%) of all New Englanders who do not have a high school diploma use the Internet, compared to 22% of such people nationwide.

The New England user population is predominantly white (86%). Meanwhile, Hispanic⁴ users have the largest minority presence in New England, at 7% of all Internet users; African-Americans represented only 1% of users. Black New Englanders are also much less likely to use the Internet than blacks nationwide – in New England, just over a third (34%) of blacks use the Internet, compared to 42% of blacks nationwide. Nationally, Hispanics make up about 9% of the user population, while African-Americans constitute another 8%.

The gender ratio of New England users sets the region apart from other regions in the United States. The national ratio of male to female users, about 50-50, is the same as the ratio in most regions in the country. But New England has a much higher proportion of men users than women. About 55% of those going online are men; 45% are women. The region with the next highest proportion of men to women is the Southeast, whose user population is 52% male. At the same time, the gender gap that exists nationally between men and women accessing the Internet (59% of men have gone online, as have 54% of women) is amplified in New England. While 55% of women in New England use the Internet, 62% of men there have done so.

In terms of age, the largest proportion (30%) of Internet users in New England is at the beginning of the prime earning years, between 25 and 34. An additional 26% are between the ages of 35 and 44, 20% are between 45 and 54, 12% are over the age of 55, and about 12% are young adults between 18 and 24. For the most part, these proportions are similar to the national average. However, New England has the smallest proportion of younger users. Nationally, young adults between 18 and 24 make up 17% of the user population, some 5-percentage points higher than the proportion of young users in New England (12%). In comparison, the proportion of younger users in California is almost twice (20%) that of New England. Younger adults in New England are also the more likely than their peers to be online – in the 25-34 and 35-44 age brackets, New Englanders are about 10 percentage points more likely to be online, led by 81% of 25-34 year olds.

About 67% of users in the New England states are employed full-time, and 13% hold down part-time employment. Comparatively, New England ranks third regionally with the highest proportion of users with full-time employment, behind the Capital region (70%) and the South (69%). About 64% of users nationally have a full-time job.

When New Englanders go online, they like to engage in many of the same activities as users in other regions.

One activity that New Englanders like to do more often than other users, however, is buy things online. About 55% of users in New England have bought a product online, compared with 45% of users nationally. Only Californians (53%) share as much excitement for online shopping as New Englanders. By comparison, those in the Midwest take the opposite tack, with only 37% having shopped online.

About 89% of the New England user population use email, which is the Web’s most popular activity. This is little different from the 88% of users nationally who have email accounts. Meanwhile, 58% of users in New England have gotten news online; about 35% have looked up financial information; about 58% have sought health information on the Internet; 45% have done research for their job; 81% have looked for information on a hobby; about 62% just enjoy being online for no particular reason; and 89% use the Internet to answer a question.

Many American Internet users (75%) turn to the Internet to look up answers to questions, but users in New England are more likely than users in any other region to do so. While about 89% of users in New England have done this, only about 70% of users have done so in the Capital region, the region with the lowest rate. The other regions of the country fall between 72% and 80%, and the Pacific Northwest (80%) is the only other region where at least 80% of its users use the Internet for this purpose.

Getting hobby information is another activity that is relatively more popular in New England than elsewhere. While this is a popular activity across the country (78% of users nationally have done this), New England (81%), California (83%), and the Mid-Atlantic (81%) are the only regions where more than four-fifths of users have looked for information about their hobbies in cyberspace.

New Englanders are among the most likely to go online on a typical day.

On an average day about 57% of users across the country use the Internet. In New England, about 60% of users are doing things on the Web. Only users in the Pacific Northwest (63%) are more likely to be online on a typical day. Also by comparison, only about half (51%) of users in the South are online on a typical day.

New Englanders are slightly more likely to connect from work, but a high proportion of home users have cable modems.

When New Englanders connect to the Internet from home, a relatively high percentage of them (16%) connect using high-speed cable modems. This is the highest proportion of cable modem users in the United States. Nationally, about 10% of users connect using cable modems. About three-quarters (77%) of users in New England use standard dial-up connections, compared with 82% of users nationally.

The two places from which users across the country are most likely to connect to the Internet are the home or the workplace. In both instances, users in New England connect at about the same rate as users nationally. About 87% of users in New England go online from home, while 52% have done so from work. Nationally, 86% of users access the Internet from home, and about 50% do so from work. However, users in New England are more likely to have home access than those in the Midwest, the region with the lowest rate of home access, where about 82% have gone online from home. At the same time, New Englanders are more likely to have work access than those in the Pacific Northwest, where about 46% have gone online from the job.

When New Englanders go online on an average day, they are slightly less likely to go online from home (74%) and more likely to go online from work (44%) than other users across the country. Nationally, about 76% go online from home on a typical day, while about 40% of users go online from work. The rate of average-day access from home in New England is the lowest of any region in the country. For example, 84% of users in the Pacific Northwest go online from home on an average day. Only users in the Midwest (73%) are as disinclined to go online from home as New Englanders.

New Englanders are about average in the amount of time they spend online.

The amount of time New Englanders spend online on a typical day and the number of times they access the Net on any given day are in line with findings for users across the country. About 38% of users in New England say they go online several times a day, the same as the national average. About a quarter of New Englanders (24%) go online at least once a day, about 17% access the Internet at least 3 to 5 times a week, about 13% go online one to two times a week, and about 6% go online less than once a week.

On a typical day, about two-thirds of the New England users who are online spend about an hour or less logged on. About 36% spend between thirty minutes to an hour online, while about 29% spend less than 30 minutes online. Nationally, about 62% of users spend an hour or less online (36% spend about 30 minutes to an hour, while 26% of users spend less than 30 minutes online). Meanwhile, about 12% of users in New England who are online on that typical day are heavy daily users who spend more than four hours online during the day. This is just above the proportion of users who do so nationally (11%). Only the Capital region (12%) and the Border states (13%) have more heavy users than New England. Also, about 8% of New England users spend one to two hours online, another 12% spend two to three hours online, and 5% of users spend between three and four hours online on a typical day.

There were a few changes, both upward and downward, in Internet usage in New England between 2000 and 2001.

In terms of the makeup of the Internet population of New England, the most significant change was the gender breakdown – in 2000, it was 50-50 men to women, but that changed to 55-45 men to women in 2001.

New Englanders also engaged in some activities online in 2001 less than they did in 2000. For instance, users in the Northeast were less inclined to look for financial information as well as perform research for their job on the Internet. At the same time, there was a slight up tick in the percentages of those seeking hobby information or answers to questions.

There were also some small changes in usage patterns between 2000 and 2001. The most notable is that users in New England spent slightly less time online in 2001 than they did in 2000, which is a pattern that has been traced in the Pew Internet Project report, “Getting Serious Online” (https://alpha.pewresearch.org/pewresearch-org/internet/Reports/2002/Getting-Serious-Online-As-Americans-Gain-Experience-They-Pursue-More-Serious-Activities.aspx).

Boston’s Favorite Web Sites

The table below lists the top five Web sites in Boston in April 2003. Those sites are also the top five in the nation and they do not vary much region-by-region. In addition, the table highlights several regional sites that are in the top 25 most heavily used sites in the region during that month. A full listing of the top 25 sites in the region can be found in the spreadsheet that is available here: https://alpha.pewresearch.org/pewresearch-org/internet/releases/release.asp?id=66

The Mid-Atlantic continues to be among the most wired regions and has the highest proportion of female adult Internet users in the country. Growth in Internet usage has leveled off in the Mid-Atlantic.

The Mid-Atlantic is one of the most wired regions in the United States, and Internet users in the four Mid-Atlantic states (Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania) stand out against those in other regions of the country for several reasons:

The user population in the Mid-Atlantic experienced almost no growth in 2002. As in 2001, about 58% of adults in the region in 2002 were Internet users. This still represents substantial growth from 2000, when 51% of adults had used the Internet.

• The region has the highest proportion of female Internet users (54%) of any region in the country.
• A high proportion of the region’s Internet users have college or graduate degrees (38%).
• Users in the Mid-Atlantic particularly enjoy looking for information online about hobbies, and they are more likely to shop online than users in most other regions. The same holds true for surfing the Net for fun.
• But they are less likely than their peers elsewhere to turn to the Internet to answer a question.

Growth in Internet usage has leveled off in the Mid-Atlantic.

In 2002, 58% of adults were Internet users, which is about the same penetration rate as 2001. At the same time, this matches the 2002 national penetration rate of 59%. The region saw substantial growth between 2000 and 2001 – in 2000, 51% of adults there had been online.

The online experience of users in the Mid-Atlantic almost exactly mirrors that of the national user population.

About 44% in the Mid-Atlantic region have been using the Internet for over three years; across the nation, a similar 44% of users have that much online experience. An additional 34% of those going online in the Mid-Atlantic have about two years’ experience, and another 22% have a year or less. By comparison, the exact same proportions of users nationally have the same amount of online experience.

In the region’s overall Internet population, those in higher income households dominate. A quarter of Internet users (26%) live in households with incomes over $75,000; in contrast, 16% of the region’s Internet users live in households earning less than $30,000. Another 22% earn between $50,000 and $75,000 a year, and about 19% of users take home between $30,000 and $50,000 a year.⁵

About 38% of users in the Mid-Atlantic have a bachelor’s degree or better and 26% have had some college experience; another 30% have a high school diploma, and about 6% have less than a high-school education. In the Mid-Atlantic, about 29% of adults who have not earned high school diplomas have gone online, compared to 22% of such people across the country.

The racial makeup of Internet users in the four Mid-Atlantic states is almost exactly the same as the makeup of the national user population. Just over three-quarters (78%) of users in both the Mid-Atlantic and across the country are white. About 9% of users in the Mid-Atlantic are African-American, with 8% Hispanic, and 5% from other races.

Hispanics in the Mid-Atlantic are much more likely to have used the Internet compared to Hispanics nationally, and Hispanics are also the most connected ethnic group in the region.⁶ Fully 62% of Hispanics in the Mid-Atlantic use the Internet, compared to 54% of Hispanics nationally. At the same time, the 62% of Hispanics online is larger, in relative terms, than the 58% of whites and 45% of African-Americans using the Internet in the Mid-Atlantic States.

The gender ratio of users in the Mid-Atlantic reflects the recent surge of women online. Across the country, the gender ratio of users is 50-50, but the Mid-Atlantic user population is 54% female. This is the highest proportion of female Internet users of any region in the country; the next highest is the Mountain region, which is 53% female. The gender ratio of users in the Mid-Atlantic contrasts sharply with that of New England, which is 55-45 male-to-female. Meanwhile, 57% of women in the Mid-Atlantic use the Internet, as compared to 54% of women nationwide.

The age breakdown of Internet users in the Mid-Atlantic states almost exactly mirrors that of the national user population. About 16% are young adults between the ages of 18 and 24; almost a quarter (23%) are between 25 and 34; 28% are between the ages of 35 and 44; about 21% are between 45 and 54; and 13% are over the age of 55. The Mid-Atlantic has the highest proportion of those between 35 and 44 of any region in the country – nationally, about 26% of users are in this age bracket. At the same time, the Mid-Atlantic has one of the lowest proportions (4%) of seniors over 65 using the Internet. Both the South and the Capital Region have a similarly small proportion of senior citizens online.

About 65% of users in the Mid-Atlantic states hold full-time jobs; 15% work part-time. Both proportions are virtually the same as the national averages (64% and 14%).

Users in the Mid-Atlantic states enjoy the same online activities as their peers in other regions.

One activity that is especially popular among Mid-Atlantic users is looking for online information about hobbies. About 81% of users in the region have done this, compared with 78% of users across the country.

By contrast, users in the Mid-Atlantic are a bit less likely than many of their peers to turn to the Internet when they need to answer to a question. This activity is one of the Internet’s most popular, with about 75% of all users having said they have done this at one time or another. In the Mid-Atlantic, about 73% of users have done this. Compared to other regions, Mid-Atlantic users are less likely to have done this activity than users in other parts of the country, especially those users in New England, where 89% of them had used the Internet when they had a question.

As for other online activities tracked during 2001, users in the Mid-Atlantic engaged in them at about the same rate as the national averages, with some small variations.

Sending and receiving email is by far the most popular online activity, and about 88% of users across the country have done this at one time or another. This proportion is just about the same as in the Mid-Atlantic (89%). At the same time, 61% of users in the Mid-Atlantic get news online; 37% look for financial information; 58% look for information about health concerns; 39% use the Internet for research purposes at their job; 65% go online “just for fun”; and 48% use the Internet to buy something.

Compared with users in other regions, users in the Mid-Atlantic do favor some online activities over Internet users in other parts of the country. This includes shopping online; only users in New England (55%) and California (53%) are more likely than users in the Mid-Atlantic to have done this. Going online just to pass time is also a popular activity in the Mid-Atlantic, and only users in the South (67%) and in the Midwest (70%) like to surf the Net just for fun more than those in the Mid-Atlantic. Use of the Net for this reason is 16 percentage points higher in the Mid-Atlantic (65%) than in the Pacific Northwest (49%).

Doing job research on the Internet is less common in the Mid-Atlantic than in other parts of the country. With 39% of users who have done so, the Mid-Atlantic is near the bottom in this category, trailed only by the Pacific Northwest (38%). In every other region of the country, more than 40% of the users have made use of the Internet at their jobs.

Mid-Atlantic users are average in their daily use of the Internet. They access the Internet from home through dial-up connections.

More than half (57%) of the Internet users in the Mid-Atlantic use the Internet on a typical day. This puts the Mid-Atlantic region squarely in the middle in terms of average daily use, behind the heavy users in the Pacific Northwest (63%) but ahead of users in the South, where only about 51% are online on a typical day.

They access the Internet from home through dial-up connections.

Like most users across the country, most users in the Mid-Atlantic connect from home to the Internet via a standard dial-up connection. Fully 80% of users in the Mid-Atlantic connect this way; the national average is 82%. About 12% of users in the Mid-Atlantic connect via a high-speed cable modem, second only to the 16% of users in New England who connect to the Internet this way. An additional 4% of users in the Mid-Atlantic have a DSL line.

The home and the workplace are the two most likely places for a person to connect to the Internet. Nationally, 86% of users go online from their home, and 50% of users do so from their job. Users in the Mid-Atlantic are about as likely to have connected from home (87%), while 51% of them have gone online from their workplace. Again, these rates of access put users in the Mid-Atlantic squarely in the middle when compared with users in other parts of the country. For instance, users in California (89%) and the Mountain states (90%) are more likely to go online from home, while users in the Capital Region (56%) are more likely to go online from work.

When users in the Mid-Atlantic go online on an average day, they are as likely to go online from home or from the workplace as the national average. On an average day, about three-quarters of users (74%) who access the Internet in the Mid-Atlantic do so from home, while 42% do so from work. Nationally, 76% of users have gone online from home on a typical day, while 40% have done so from their job. Again, these rates put users in the middle compared with their peers in other parts of the country.

The number of times people go online and the amount of time spent online on an average day in the Mid-Atlantic region are in line with the national averages. About 39% of users in the Mid-Atlantic states go online several times a day, about 2 percentage points higher than the national average but behind the 45% of users in the Capital region who go online that many times a day. About 23% of users in the Mid-Atlantic go online about once a day; about 17% go online at least three to five times a week; 13% access the Internet about once or twice a week; and about 6% use the Internet less than once a week.

When users in the Mid-Atlantic are online on a typical day, about 60% of them spend an hour or less online – 26% will spend less than 30 minutes in cyberspace, and 34% will be online from 30 to 60 minutes. Nationally, about 62% of users spend an hour or less online (36% spend about 30 minutes to an hour, while 26% of users spend less than 30 minutes online). At the same time, about 9% of users in the Mid-Atlantic are online from one to two hours a day, another 12% spend two to three hours in cyberspace, about 6% stay online from three to four fours, and about 12% are heavy users who are online for more than four hours on a typical day. The proportion of heavy users is one of the highest in the country, along with California (13%), the Capital region (13%) and the Border states (13%).

Those in the Mid-Atlantic perceive a somewhat positive impact on their lives from the Internet. In March 2000, users were asked several questions about the extent to which the Internet had helped them improve aspects of their daily life – shopping, getting health information, managing their finances, connecting with family and friends, learning new things, and pursuing a hobby.

For the most part, Internet users in the four states of the Mid-Atlantic region agree with other online Americans that the Internet has had a somewhat positive impact on their lives. About 38% said that their ability to shop had seen some or a lot of improvement, 4 percentage points higher than the national average. This is in line with the finding above that Mid-Atlantic Internet users are among the country’s most prolific Web shoppers. About 17% said they had seen a large improvement, slightly higher than the 15% of users nationally who said the same thing.

Looking for health information online is a popular Web activity as well, but for the most part, users have yet to see the Internet making a marked improvement in their ability to get such information. About 16% of users in the Mid-Atlantic said their ability to find health information had improved a lot, while another 19% had seen some improvement.

Managing one’s finances online does not seem to be of much importance to many users, including those in the Mid-Atlantic region. Only about 41% had seen any improvement at all, from “only a little” to “a lot,” because of the Internet. About 58% had seen no improvement at all. Nationally, about 40% of users saw an improvement of some kind.

The Internet’s ability to improve connections to friends and family is well documented. While users in the Mid-Atlantic agree, their enthusiasm is not as strong as it is nationally. About 49% had seem some or a lot of improvement in their connections to family members because of the Internet, while 58% saw a similar improvement in their connections with their friends. By comparison, about 55% of users nationally saw such improvement with members of their family; 61% saw a similar improvement in their connections to their friends.

The Internet is a treasure trove of information. About 46% of users in the Mid-Atlantic said that the Internet had improved their ability to learn new things a lot; another 31% saw some improvement. These reflect the findings for the national user group.

As stated above, looking for information about hobbies was especially popular among users in the Mid-Atlantic. A little over half (51%) of users there saw some or a lot of improvement in their ability to pursue their hobbies because of the Internet. About 21% said they saw a lot of improvement, about the same as the national average. Meanwhile, 31% of users in the Mid-Atlantic said they saw no improvement at all, the same as users nationally.

There were some changes between 2000 and 2001 in the makeup of the user population and in Internet usage in the Mid-Atlantic.

The strong increase in the percentage of adults who used the Internet between 2000 and 2001 was the most significant – the proportion of adults using the Internet in the Mid-Atlantic jumped from 51% in 2000 to 58% in 2001. Also significant was the surge of women online in the Mid-Atlantic. In 2000, 47% of women in this region were using the Internet. That proportion jumped to 55% of women in 2001, giving the Mid-Atlantic the largest proportion of female users of any region in the country.

Mid-Atlantic users joined the exodus away from looking for financial information online in 2001. They also did a lot less research for their jobs online. By contrast, there was a slight up tick in looking for hobby information on the Web.

Between 2000 and 2001, there was small increase in the percentage of users in the Mid-Atlantic region that went online several times a day. Otherwise, usage patterns in the region stayed the same.

The Mid-Atlantic’s favorite Web sites

The tables below list the top five Web sites in New York City and Philadelphia in April 2003. Those sites are also the top five in the nation and they do not vary much region-by-region. In addition, the table highlights several regional sites that are in the top 25 most heavily used sites in the region during that month. A full listing of the top 25 sites in the region can be found in the spreadsheet that is available here: https://alpha.pewresearch.org/pewresearch-org/internet/releases/release.asp?id=66

The National Capital is another of the country’s more wired areas.

The National Capital Region is one of the most wired areas in the United States, and Internet users in the region (Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia) stand out from those in other parts of the country for several reasons:

• They are among the most experienced users in the entire country.
• They are wealthier and more educated than the national average.
• They include the highest population of African-American Internet users in the nation (17%).
• They are more likely than their peers elsewhere in the nation to get news online, look for financial information, or seek help with their health. But they are the least likely to use the Net to look up the answer to a question than users in other regions.
• About 52% of those who use the Internet at work connect on an average day, the greatest proportion of workplace access of any region. Conversely, the region has the lowest rate of daily home use of the Net.
• The region’s Internet users are probably the most enthusiastic Internet users in the country when it comes to assessing the impact of the Net on activities across the board.

The National Capital is another of the country’s more wired areas.

In 2002, 65% of adults in the National Capital have used the Internet, making it one of the most wired regions in the country. Nationally, about 59% of adults have been online. This represents a substantial increase from the 58% of adults over 18 in the region who reported in 2001 that they were Internet users. In 2000, about 53% of adults in the Capital region were online, compared with 50% of adults across the country.

The user population in the Capital region is the most experienced of any region in the United States and is also well educated and relatively wealthy.

Just about half of National Capital users (50%) are Web veterans with more than three years’ experience. Nationally, about 44% of the adult Internet population has been online for that long. An additional 34% of users in the National Capital have at least two years of experience, while about 16% have a year or less online. Only California (49%) and the Pacific Northwest (50%) have user populations that are as experienced as the one in the National Capital. At the same time, the region has one of the smallest proportions of users (5%) with less than six months’ online, a distinction it shares with New England (5%), the Lower Midwest (5%), the Pacific Northwest (6%), and California (6%).

The National Capital’s Internet users are among the most educated in the country. About 41% possess a college diploma or higher degree, tied with New England (41%). Nationally, about 36% of users have a similar level of education. An additional 29% of users in the National Capital have had some college experience, while 26% have a high school diploma and about 3% have less than a high-school education. All of these proportions are in line with the national averages. However, the region has one of the smallest proportions of users without a high school diploma, tied with the Upper Midwest (3%). Those without high school degrees in the National Capital region are much less likely than their peers nationally to use the Internet – 14% have gone online in the region, as opposed to 22% nationally. At the same time, almost 9 in 10 (88%) college graduates in the region have gone online, somewhat higher than the 82% of college graduates nationally who are online.

Users in the National Capital are among the wealthiest in the nation, and there is also a tiny cohort of low-income Web users. The 31% of users who earn more than $75,000 a year in household income is the second largest such group in the country, behind the 33% of users in New England with similar household incomes. Nationally, about 23% of those online earn that much. At the same time, only 15% of users in the National Capital earn less than $30,000 a year, well under the 19% of users nationally who earn the same amount, and also the smallest proportion of such users anywhere in the country. About 21% of users in the region earn between $30,000 and $50,000 a year, and another 16% earn between $50,000 and $75,000. Nationally, 22% and 19% of users earn the same amounts respectively.⁸

The National Capital has the highest proportion of African-American Internet users.

Racially, the region is notable for having the highest proportion of African-American Internet users of any region in the country. Fully 17% of the user population is African-American; by comparison, only about 8% of the national user population is African-American. In the National Capital, 75% of users are white, about 5% are Hispanic,⁹ and 4% come from other racial and ethnic backgrounds. The only regions of the country that have as high a proportion of African-Americans in their user populations are the South and the Southeast, which are both 14% African-American. Hispanics in the National Capital are much more likely to be online than Hispanics nationally – 61% compared to 54%.

The region’s users reflect their peers nationwide in gender and age.

The gender ratio of the region’s user population is split exactly between men and women, matching the makeup of the national user population. However, women in the Capital region are slightly more likely to be using the Internet than American women overall.

In age, Internet users in the National Capital break down in the same way as the national user population. About 15% of users in the region are young adults between 18 and 24; a quarter (25%) are between the ages of 25 and 34; another quarter (25%) are between the ages of 35 and 44; about 19% are between 45 and 54; and about 16% are over 55. Compared with other regions of the country, the National Capital has one of the smallest proportions (4%) of senior citizens (those who are over 65) online. Only the South (3%) and the Mid-Atlantic (4%) have as small a proportion of senior citizens in their user populations.

More of the region’s users work full time.

The National Capital region has the highest proportion of users (70%) who hold down full-time jobs of any region in the country, and this proportion is 6 percentage points higher than the national average (64%). Meanwhile, 12% hold down part-time employment.

For the most part, Internet users in the National Capital engage in the same online activities as their peers across the country.

However, users in the National Capital area are slightly more likely to get news online, to have looked for online financial information, and to seek information about their health. On the other hand, users in the region are less likely to use the Internet to look up the answer to a question than their peers across the country.

When it comes to looking up information online to answer a question, about 75% of Internet users across the country have done this, while 70% of users in the National region have done so.

Sending and receiving email has always been the Internet’s most popular activity, and 88% of users across the country in 2001 had done this. A similar 88% of users in the National Capital use email. Meanwhile, 43% have sought financial information; about 59% have looked for information about a health concern on the Web; about 40% have done online research for their job; a little over three quarters of users (78%) have looked for information about a hobby; about 65% have gone online “just for fun,” and about 44% have bought something on the Internet.

As for reading news on the Web, 62% of the region’s users do this, on par with users in the Border States (64%), the South (63%), and the Mid-Atlantic (61%). The region’s 62% rate is 9 percentage points higher than the rate for the Pacific Northwest, the region of the country with the lowest rate of online news usage. When it comes to getting financial information online (43%), no other region in the country has done so as much as the National Capital, although users in the South and in California are almost as enthusiastic (both 41%). Likewise, the only regions that are as enthusiastic about looking for health information on the Internet are New England (57% of users), the South (61%), and the Midwest (59%).

Going online for no particular reason, or “just for fun,” is also relatively popular among users in the Capital region. The 65% of users in the National Capital area who have done this do not make it the leading region for this activity; users in the South and the Lower Midwest like this activity the most. However, this proportion is still 16 percentage points higher than the proportion of users in the Pacific Northwest, and 12 percentage points higher than in the Mountain States. In a previous Pew Internet Project report, “Getting serious online,” it was found that more experienced users, such as those found in the National Capital and the Pacific Northwest, tend to spend less time online, and to log on for specific reasons. On the flipside, less experienced users are more likely to surf (and explore) the Web.

National Capital users log on more regularly than most. On a typical day, about 59% of the Internet users in the Capital region are online. This is slightly higher than the national average of 57% and is among the highest of any region in the country. Only the 63% of users in the Pacific Northwest and the 60% of users in New England are online more often on a typical day. Also by comparison, the 59% of users going online on an average day in the National Capital is 8 percentage points higher than the 51% of users in the South doing the same – the region with the lowest daily access in the country.

More users in the National Capital access the Internet from work than anywhere else, but the region’s typical user still logs on from home using a dial-up connection.

When users in the National Capital hook up to the Web from home, 85% of them do so via a standard dial-up connection, the second highest rate of any region (in the South, 86% of users have a dial-up connection). An additional 8% have a cable modem, and about 4 % use a DSL line. By comparison, 82% of users nationally use a standard dial-up modem, 10% have a cable modem, and 5% have a DSL line.

In the National Capital, about 87% of Internet users go online from home, while about 56% say they connect to the Internet while at work, the highest proportion of users in the country. The proportion of home users in the Capital region is similar to the 86% of users nationally who go online at home. On the other hand, the region’s users are much more likely to go online at the office – nationally, 50% of Internet users use the Web at work.

When they are online on a typical day, users in the region make heavy use of the Internet from their workplace. About 52% of those who use the Internet in this region on any given day connect from the office. This is significantly higher than the 40% of users nationally who do so, and the region has the heaviest average daily workplace use of the Internet of any region in the country. No other region even comes close; in second place is New England (44%). Meanwhile, about 71% of users in the Capital region who access the Web on an average day do so from home, about 5 percentage points lower than the national average of 76%. In fact, the region has the lowest rate of daily home use of the Internet of any region in the country. The Pacific Northwest has the highest, at 84% of users.

Users in the Capital region are the most likely to access the Internet several times a day of any regional user population in the country. Fully 45% go online several times a day, compared with 37% nationwide. An additional 23% of users in the Capital region go online at least once a day; about 16% go online 3-5 times a week; 10% go online once or twice a week; and 4% go online less often.

National Capital users are online for about the same amount of time as others around the country.

On a typical day, about 57% of users in the Capital region who are online spend an hour or less on the Web. About 35% spend 30 minutes to an hour online, while 23% will spend 30 minutes or less using the Internet. Nationally, about 62% of users spend an hour or less online (36% spend about 30 minutes to an hour, while 26% of users spend less than 30 minutes online). Meanwhile, about 11% of users in the region will typical spend one to two hours online; 11% will spend two to three hours; about 6% will stay online for three to four hours; and 13% of users will spend more than fours on the Internet.

Users in the National Capital are the most enthusiastic about how the Internet’s positive effects on their lives. In March 2000, users were asked several questions about the extent to which the Internet had helped them improve aspects of their daily life – shopping, getting health information, managing their finances, connecting with family and friends, learning new things, and pursuing a hobby.

The National Capital region’s Internet users are probably the most enthusiastic users in the country – in all the aspects of life that were asked about, these users noted improvements across the board, most often at higher rates than their peers elsewhere.

Users in the region are clear about one thing: The Internet has definitely improved their ability to shop. About 43% of users say that their ability to shop has been improved a lot or to some extent by the Internet. About 34% of users nationally would agree. Compared with users in other regions, those in the region are the most positive about this. About 19% noted a significant improvement, second only to the 25% or users in the Pacific Northwest who said the same thing; meanwhile, 24% of National Capital users said they saw some improvement in their shopping ability.

Users in the region are also very enthusiastic about how the Internet has helped them maintain and grow their connections to their friends and family. About 62% of users in the region said the Internet had improved their connections with other family members to some extent or a lot, while 68% said their connections to their friends had similarly improved. By comparison, about 55% of users nationally said they saw such improvement with their family members, and 61% said they experienced the same with their friends. Users in the National Capital are the most enthusiastic in the country about the way the Internet has improved their connections to their friends; and only users in the Pacific Northwest (68%) were more enthusiastic about how the Internet had helped their connections with their families.

The Internet is one of the best places to go if you want to learn something new, and Internet users in the region wholeheartedly agree. Fully 85% of them said the Internet had improved their ability to learn new things a lot or somewhat, as compared to 79% of users nationally who said the same thing. Fully 52% said that there had been a lot of improvement, 5 percentage points higher than the national average and second only to users in the Border States (where 57% saw a lot of improvement) in their enthusiasm.

When it comes to getting health-care information, users in the National Capital share the same feelings as users across the country about the Internet’s ability to help them. About 36% said the Internet had improved their ability to get health information either a lot or somewhat. Nationally, a similar 36% said the same thing.

Managing finances online is not a big deal to users in the National Capital. Fully 61% said the Internet had not helped in any way their ability to handle their personal finances, about 2 percentage points more than the national average. About 26% said that there had been a lot of or some improvement, which is about the national average.

There were some minor changes in Internet usage patterns in the National Capital region, both upward and downward, between 2000 and 2001.

For the most part, the demographic make-up of the user population remained the same. There were, however, some interesting drops in Internet activity levels between 2000 and 2001. The use of email by users in the region fell slightly, with larger drops in the use of the Internet for job research and for trying to research the answer to questions. Online shopping also fell slightly.

Usage patterns also remained more or less the same between 2000 and 2001.

Favorite Web Sites in Washington, DC

The table below lists the top five Web sites in Washington, DC, in April 2003. Those sites are also the top five in the nation and they do not vary much region-by-region. In addition, the table highlights several regional sites that are in the top 25 most heavily used sites in the region during that month. A full listing of the top 25 sites in the region can be found in the spreadsheet that is available here:  https://alpha.pewresearch.org/pewresearch-org/internet/releases/release.asp?id=66

The population of Internet users has grown strongly in the Southeast in recent years.

Once one of the less-wired regions in the United States, the Southeast has seen strong growth in Internet usage among adults. Internet users in the four states in the region — Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina — stand out in comparison with those in other regions of the country for several reasons:

• Users in the Southeast are an interesting mix of Web veterans and rookies.
• They represent one of the more racially and ethnically diverse user groups in the entire country.
• On an average day, 80% of those who go online do so from home—one of the highest rates of daily home access in the country, and second only to the Pacific Northwest.
• They feel more strongly than users in most other regions that the Internet has been a boon to their relationships with family and friends.
• They don’t like to shop online as much as those in other regions. And they are less likely to look for information about hobbies on the Web than users in any other region in the country.

The region, which had lagged in Internet use in 2000, is now at near the national average. Internet usage in the Southeast grew steadily in 2002, to 57% of adults reporting that they use the Internet, just under the national average of 59% of adults. Southeastern Internet penetration grew from 54% of adults in 2001 — nationally, 56% of adults were online in 2001. The 2002 percentage also represents a nine-percentage point increase from the 48% of Southeasterners who had been online in 2000.

Users in the Southeast comprise an interesting mix of Web veterans and rookies, but match the national profile for education and income.

While 42% of users in the Southeast are veterans with more than three years’ experience, 26% are relatively new to the Internet, with a year or less online. Another 32% have at least two years’ experience. Nationally, about 44% of users are veterans with more than three years online, and about 22% are new to the Web, with a year or less; another 34% have at least two years’ experience. Looking at other regions of the country, only the South had a higher proportion of users (28%) with a year or less online. At the same time, the South (36%), the Upper Midwest (40%), and the Industrial Midwest (41%) are the only regions of the country that had lower proportions of veteran users than the Southeast. The Capital region has the highest proportion of veteran users, with 50% of the user population online for three years or more.

The education levels of users in the Southeast almost exactly mirror those of the national user population. About 36% of Southeastern users are college educated, and an additional 30% have had some experience in college. About 29% have at least a high school education, and about 5% of users have less than a high school education.

Nationally, 36% of users have a college degree, about 30% of users have had some college education, an additional 29% have graduated from high school, and about 6% never finished high school. Southeasterners without high school diplomas are about a third less likely to use the Internet than their peers nationally. In the Southeast, about 15% of those without high school diplomas use the Web, compared to 22% nationally.

In terms of household income, most users in the Southeast tend to be solidly middle class. Also, the income distribution of Southeastern users among the income brackets is almost perfectly proportional. Fully 43% earn between $30,000 and $75,000 a year in household income, as compared to 41% of users nationwide. About 23% earn between $30,000 and $50,000 and another 20% earn between $50,000 and $75,000 per year. Meanwhile, 20% of users in the Southeast have high household incomes of $75,000 or more a year, while 20% earn less than $30,000 a year. In the national user population, 23% are high wage earners, and 19% have low incomes under $30,000.¹⁰ Of note are that high wage earners in this region are slightly less likely to use the Internet than similar earners nationally – 82% compared to 86% nationally.

The Southeast region has one of the more racially and ethnically diverse user groups in the country. Internet users in the Southeast include slightly more men and seniors.

Proportionately, the four Southeastern states have one of the largest African-American user groups of any region in the country. Fully 14% of users in the Southeastern states are African-American, compared with about 8% of users nationally. Only the National Capital has a larger proportion of African-American users (17%). The South also has a similar proportion of African-American Internet users (14%). Meanwhile, about 75% of users in the Southeast are white, 7% are Hispanic,¹¹ and about 3% come from other races. The proportion of Hispanic users in the Southeast is one of the higher concentrations in the country. The region is far behind California (21% Hispanic users) and the Border States (21%); still, at 7%, the proportion of Hispanic users in the Southeast is almost twice that of the neighboring Southern region (4%). The sizable Hispanic community found in Florida most likely explains this.

The proportion of white users in the Southeast is one of the smallest in the country, higher only than those of California (62% white) and the Border States (67%). Meanwhile, Hispanics in the Southeast are slightly more likely to go online than their peers nationwide, while African-Americans are slightly less likely to do so than their peers.

Internet users in the Southeast include slightly more men and seniors.

The proportion of men (52%) is slightly larger than the proportion of women (48%) in the Southeastern user population. The gender ratio of the national user population is 50-50.

In age, the Southeastern user population closely resembles the breakdown of the national user population. About 15% of Southeasterners using the Internet are young adults between the ages of 18 and 24; another quarter are between 25 and 34; about 27% are between 35 and 44; 19% are between 45 and 54; and about 14% are over 55. Of the 14% of users above 55, about 5% are senior citizens over 65. Compared with other regions of the country, the Southeast has a large proportion of seniors online. Interestingly, young adult users between 18 and 24 are relatively less likely to use the Internet than other adults their age around the country.

About 65% of users in the Southeast hold down full-time jobs, which is about the same as the proportion of users nationally (64%). Another 11% have part-time jobs. Also, about 7% of Southeasterners online are retirees.

Southeasterners enjoy most popular online activities, but are less likely to use the Internet to answer questions. When Southeasterners go online, they enjoy many of the same activities as other users across the country. One difference, however, is that they seem less likely than their peers to turn to the Internet when they need to answer a question. Performing an Internet search to answer a question is one of the Web’s most popular activities, something that 75% of users across the country have done at one time or another. Some 73% of users in the Southeast have done so. In contrast, users in New England are much more likely to have done so – fully 89% have performed an Internet search.

Using email is the Web’s most popular activity – almost nine in ten users (88%) across the country use email. This enthusiasm for emailing is shared by users in the Southeast – 89% have sent or received an email. Also, about 59% of users in the Southeast have gotten news online; 38% have sought financial information; about 56% have looked for information about health-related matters; about 43% use the Internet for research at their job; 73% have gone online to look for information related to their hobby; about 61% have gone online “just for fun”; and 42% use the Internet to buy something.

Compared with users in other regions, Southeasterners to tend to favor some activities online more than others. Shopping online is frequently touted as a common Internet activity, but only 45% of users nationally have done this. The 42% of Southeasterners who have bought something through a Web site represent one of the smallest proportions of any region in the country. Only users in the Upper Midwest (37%) and the Midwest (36%) are as unlikely to have shopped on the Net. This is probably because shopping online is most often an activity of veteran Internet users, and these three regions have proportionally more new users than other regions of the country. The region with the highest proportion of Web shoppers, New England (55%), also has a high proportion of veteran users with more than three years’ experience online.

Looking for information online related to a hobby is one of the Web’s most popular activities – fully 78% of users nationally have done this. However, at 73%, the proportion of Southeastern users who have looked for hobby information online gives the region the lowest proportion of hobby seekers of any in the country. By comparison, 83% of users in California have included the Internet in the pursuit of their hobbies.

The region’s users are least likely to go online on a typical day. About 55% of Internet users in the Southeast are likely to go online on a typical day, slightly less than the national rate (57%). In fact, this is among the lowest rates of any region in the country. The South has the lowest proportion (51%) of users going online on an average day; likewise, about 55% of the users in both the Industrial Midwest and the Upper Midwest use the Internet daily. By comparison, those in the Pacific Northwest are the heaviest daily users – about 63% of them are online on a typical day.

Users are more likely to log on from home than those in other parts of the country.

About four out of five users (82%) in the country use a standard phone line when they connect to the Internet from home. About 5% have a DSL line, and about 10% have a high-speed cable modem. Users in the Southeast connect from home in much the same proportions – 81% use a standard dial-up connection, about 5% have DSL, and 10% use cable modems.

Nationally, about 86% of users log on from home, while about 50% have done so from their place of work. In the Southeast, users are slightly more likely to have home access – 87% of users said they had logged from home at one time or another. Meanwhile, about 49% of online Southeasterners use the Internet at work.

On an average day, about 80% of users in the Southeast who log on do so from home. This is somewhat higher than the proportion of users nationally (76%) who do so. This rate of daily home access to the Internet in the Southeast is one of the highest in the country, trailing only the 84% of home users in the Pacific Northwest who log on from home on a typical day. Meanwhile, about 40% of users who access the Internet on a typical day in the Southeast do from the office. This proportion is the same as the 40% of users nationally who do the same thing.

The number of times per day and the amount of time spent online on a typical day by users in the Southeast are similar to the national averages. About 34% of Southeasterners go online several times a day; an additional 30% go online about once a day (this is the highest proportion of any region in the country). An additional 17% log on about three to five times a week; about 10% go online once or twice a week; and about 6% use the Internet less often than that. Nationally, about 37% of users log on several times a day; about a quarter (26%) go online at least once a day; about 16% use the Internet three to five times a week; about 12% log on once or twice a week; and 6% go online less than weekly.

When users in the Southeast go online on an average day, about 58% of them will spend an hour or less in cyberspace. About 23% will stay on for thirty minutes or less, while 35% will spend between thirty minutes to an hour online. An additional 10% will spend between one and two hours online; 15% will spend two to three hours on the Web; 6% will stay online for three to four hours; and 11%, the heaviest users, will stay logged on for four or more hours. All of these proportions are similar to the national averages.

Southeasterners find the Internet valuable in keeping in touch with friends and family. In March 2000, users were asked several questions about the extent to which the Internet had helped them improve aspects of their daily life – shopping, getting health information, managing their finances, connecting with family and friends, learning new things, and pursuing a hobby.

Users in the Southeast are pretty sure about one thing: The Internet has been a boon to their relationships with their friends. About 41% of users said that the Internet had improved connections to their friends “a lot.” An additional 25% said they had seen “some” improvement. The 41% who had seen “a lot” of improvement represent the largest proportion of users to say so of any region in the country, and that figure is 7 percentage points higher than the national average.

Southeasterners are just as enthusiastic about the Internet when it comes to their connections to members of their family. About 36% said that the Internet improved connections to their family “a lot,” compared with 31% of users nationally. An additional 20% said they had seen “some” improvement; 24% of users nationally said the same thing. The 36% of Southeasterners who felt that the Internet had been a significant boon to their family relationships represent the second highest proportion of any region in the country to say so, trailing only the 38% of users in the Mountain states who said the same thing.

Going online to look for health-care information is one of the more popular Internet activities. It has been established in several Pew Internet Project reports that online health information has been a boon to many users and has helped people make important health-care decisions. Users in the Southeast wholeheartedly agree. About 43% of Southeastern users said that the Internet had improved a lot or somewhat their ability to get health information. About 18% noted “a lot” of improvement. The 43% rate of users who noted an improvement is about 7 percentage points higher than the national average (36%), and only matched by users in the South, where 43% of users said the Internet had helped them in their ability to get health-care information.

Southeasterners are not as active in shopping online as those in other regions. Their feelings about whether the Internet helps their ability to shop reflect that. About half (50%) of users in the Southeast said that the Internet had not helped their ability to shop “at all.” This is the second-highest regional proportion of users to say so, behind the 51% of users in the Upper Midwest who agree, and 6 percentage points higher than the national average (44%). Meanwhile, about 32% of users in the Southeast noted some or a lot of improvement in their ability to shop because of the Internet. About 34% of users nationally said the same thing.

Users in the Southeast agree with their peers across the country that the Internet hasn’t been much help in improving the way they manage their finances. About 59% of users in the Southeast said that the Internet had helped “not at all,” which is the same proportion of users nationally who said the same thing. About 28% noted any sort of improvement, slightly higher than the 27% of users nationally who said the same thing.

About half (51%) of users in the Southeast say that the Internet has helped them a lot in their ability to learn new things. An additional 28% said the Internet has helped somewhat. The proportion of users who said the Internet helped a lot is one of the highest in the country, and is 4 percentage points higher than the national average. Only the 57% of users in the Border States and the 52% of users in the Capital Region were more enthusiastic on this point.

Southeasterners don’t use the Internet for their hobbies as much as users in other regions of the country. User opinions on how helpful the Internet has been to the pursuit of hobbies vary widely by region. While 35% of users in the Pacific Northwest say that the Internet has improved their ability to pursue a hobby a lot, only 16% of users in the Upper Midwest agree with them. The 19% of users in the Southeast who say the same thing fall between those two extremes, and the rate is about 3 percentage points lower than the national average of 22%. An additional 29% of users in the Southeast noted somewhat of an improvement due to the Internet – the same proportion as for the national user population.

There has been growth in the online population since 2000, but little change in demographics. In 2000, about 48% of adults in the Southeast had been online. By 2001, the percentage had increased to 54%, a significant increase. Otherwise, there were no significant changes in the demographic makeup of the Southeast user population.

In terms of online activities, there was a drop across the board between 2000 and 2001, in some cases rather significantly. Southeasterners were much less likely to have sought financial information, performed online research for their job, gone online “just for fun,” or gone online to answer a question in 2001 than they were in 2000. The drop in looking for financial information mirrored a similar finding among users all over the country.

There were some changes in online usage patterns in the Southeast, including a strong increase in the number of users accessing the Web from home. There were also small upticks in the percentage of users accessing the Internet from both home and from work on an average day in 2001.

Some popular Web sites in the Southeast

The table below lists the top five Web sites in Miami and Atlanta in April 2003. Those sites are also the top five in the nation and they do not vary much region-by-region. In addition, the table highlights several regional sites that are in the top 25 most heavily used sites in the region during that month. A full listing of the top 25 sites in the region can be found in the spreadsheet that is available here: https://alpha.pewresearch.org/pewresearch-org/internet/releases/release.asp?id=66

The South has the nation’s least experienced Internet user population, and has the highest proportion of novice users.

Users in the seven Southern states (West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas) stand out against those elsewhere in the nation for several reasons:

• The South has the lowest rate of Internet access of any region in the United States. In 2002, only 48% of Southern adults use the Internet, well below the national rate of 59%, and the only region of the country below 50%.
• In just about every demographic category, whether it be income, age, education, Southerners are less likely to use the Internet than their peers.
• The region has one of the largest proportions of African-American users in the country, 14%, compared with a national average of 8%.
• Surfing the Web is one of the South’s favorite Internet activities, and users there are among the most prolific surfers in the country.
• Users in the South are also the most likely to have sought health information on the Web.
• Getting news online is particularly popular in the South, where 63% of Internet users have done so at one time or another.
• While many Southerners think the Internet has been a positive force in their family relationships, 35% say it has made no improvement—the greatest disagreement in any area of the country.

The South is the least wired region in the country.

The South has always been the country’s least wired region, and that trend continued in 2002, where only 48% of adults reported they were Internet users, compared to the national average of 59%. As in both 2001 and 2000, Internet penetration in the South was below 50% (46% in 2001 and 40% in 2000), while nationally, it was 56% in 2001 and 50% in 2000.

It is important to note that the relative non-use of the Internet in the Southern states, when compared to the national averages, cuts across every demographic group – race, income, education, and gender. While some gaps are more pronounced than others, it can be said that Southerners of every stripe are less likely to be online than their peers.

The South has the nation’s least experienced Internet user population, as well as the country’s highest proportion of novice users. In 2001, about 36% of Southern users were veterans with three or more years’ experience online, about 8 percentage points lower than the national average of 44%. The next smallest proportion of veteran users can be found in the Upper Midwest, where 40% of users have been online for three or more years. In contrast, the user population in the National Capital region, which is dominated by experienced users, is 50% veteran users. In the South, an additional 36% of users have been online for two to three years, and this group has the most typical level of experience of all users in the region. About 17% have been online for about a year, and 11% are Internet rookies with six months’ or less Web experience. These 27% of users with a year or less online make up the largest proportion of such users in the country, and the 11% of users who are rookies also form the largest such group in the United States.

By comparison, 22% of users across the country have a year or so of online experience; 8% have been online for less than six months. Only the Southeast rivals the South in the inexperience of its user population – about 26% of users in the Southeast have been online for a year or so, and 7% have six months or less of Web use. In contrast, only 16% of users in the country’s most Internet-savvy area, the Capital region, have been online for a year or less, and only 5% have six months or less on the Web.

Southern users have the country’s lowest levels of education and household income.

In general, Internet access correlates highly with education and household income levels and this is true in the South.  About 28% of Internet users in the South have a college diploma or higher degree, which is 8 percentage points lower than the national average. This is also by far the lowest proportion of college-educated users of any region in the country – the next lowest proportion can be found in the Border States, where 31% of Internet users have a college diploma. In the most highly educated region in the country, New England, 41% of Internet users have college diplomas. Meanwhile, 30% of users in the South have some college experience, an additional 36% have a high school education but no more, and about 6% of users have less than a high school education. Of note is that the South has the highest proportion of users with just a high school education – nationally, about 29% of users have a similar level of education. Meanwhile, Southerners at every education level are less likely to go online than similarly educated users nationwide. The gap is most pronounced with Southerners who do not have high school diplomas – 14% of them are online, compared to 22% of similarly educated Americans nationwide. College educated Southerners are also much less likely to use the Internet.

In terms of household income, Southern users tend to be poorer than their peers across the country. About 18% of users in the South earn more than $75,000 a year, a number notably under the national average of 23%, and tied with the Mountain states for having the smallest cohorts of such users in the country. At the other end of the income spectrum, 21% of users in the South have modest household incomes under $30,000 a year, which is slightly higher than the national average of 19%, but is still one of the largest of any region in the country. The Border States have the largest cohort of such users (22%). Overall, Southerners earning less than $30,000 a year are much less likely to use the Internet than other Americans with the same income – 30% of Southerners versus 38% overall. Meanwhile, a quarter of Southern users earn household incomes between $30,000 and $50,000 a year and another 20% earn between $50,000 and $75,000 a year. Nationally, 22% and 18% take home the same amounts respectively.¹²

The South has one of the largest groups of African-American users in the country. Women in the South are less likely to be online than women elsewhere.

About 14% of Southern users are black, compared with 8% nationally. Only the Southeast (15%) and the National Capital (17%) have larger proportions of African-American Internet users. Meanwhile, 80% of the users in the South are white, 4% are Hispanic,¹³ and about 3% are of other races. Nationally, whites make up 78% of the user population, Hispanics represent about 9%, and other races make up about 5%.

Women in the South are less likely to be online than women elsewhere.

The gender mix of the Internet user population in the South is weighted slightly toward men. Men make up 53% of the regional user population; women make up 47%. The national ratio is 50-50. Women in the South are much less likely to be online than women nationwide. Only 42% of women in the South use the Internet, as compared to 54% of women nationally. There is also a yawning gap among men, with 52% of Southern men online, compared with 59% of men nationwide.

The age breakdown of the Southern user population mirrors the national breakdown. In the South, about 15% of Internet users are young adults between 18 and 24; a little under a quarter (24%) are between 25 and 34; about 25% are between 35 and 44; 21% are between 45 and 54; and 15% are over the age of 55. The South does have one of the smallest proportions of seniors over 65 using the Internet – 3%. The Capital region and the Mid-Atlantic also have a tiny proportion of senior citizens online.

About 69% of users in the South hold down full-time employment, slightly higher than the national average of 64%. An additional 11% of Southern users work part-time.

For the most part, users in the South share the same fervor for Internet activities as their peers in other regions of the country.

However, there are some notable differences in the online behavior of Southerners.

Surfing the Web just for fun is one of Southerners’ favorite Internet activities, and users there are more likely to engage in this than users in most other regions. A little over two-thirds (67%) of users in the South said they go online “just for fun,” 6 percentage points higher than the national average. Only users in the Midwest (70%) are more likely to go online for this reason. At the other end of the scale less than half (49%) of users in the Pacific Northwest say they go online without a particular reason.

Users in the South are also the most likely to seek health information on the Internet. This activity, one of the Web’s most popular, has been pursued by about 56% of users across the country at one time or another, whereas three-fifths (61%) of Web users in the South have looked online for information related to their health. By comparison, only 49% of users in the Pacific Northwest have done so, the smallest proportion in the country.

The Net has quickly become the place to go to answer a question, no matter what the subject. Consequently, this activity has become one of the most popular on the Web, and 75% of users nationally have gone online at one time or another to look for an answer. Users in the South are just as likely as their peers to use the Internet for this purpose. A similar 75% of Southern users have done so. Users in New England (89%) and the Pacific Northwest (80%) are the most likely to go online looking for an answer to a question.

Email is by far the most popular activity on the Internet, and 88% of users across the country use email. Those online in the South are just as fervent about email, and 87% use it. Meanwhile, about 63% of users in the South have gotten the news online; 41% have looked for financial information; about 42% use the Internet at their jobs for research purposes; 78% have used the Internet to get information about their hobby; and about 43% have bought a product online. These are in line with the national averages.

However, there are some notable region-to-region differences. Getting the news online is one of the more popular activities for users in the South, and the 63% who have done so represent one of the largest proportions in the country. By comparison, only 53% of users in the Pacific Northwest have gotten news from a Web site, the smallest proportion of any region in the country.

Southerners are the least likely Americans to log on every day. On a typical day, about half (51%) of Internet users in the South will log on to the Internet, well under the national average of 57% of users. This rate of daily access is the lowest of any region in the country, and reflects the relative inexperience of the Southern Internet population – we have found that more experienced users are more likely to log on to the Internet on a daily basis. In two regions with very experienced Internet populations, the Pacific Northwest and New England, 63% and 60% of users go online respectively on a typical day. The rate of daily usage in the South is by far the lowest – the next lowest rate is in the Southeast, where 55% of users are online on an average day.

Southerners follow the national pattern: they log on from home and spend an average amount of time online.

When users in the South want to log on from home, they overwhelmingly do so via a standard dial-up connection. About 86% do so, compared with the national average of 82%. About 9% access the Internet via a cable modem, while another 2% have a DSL hookup. Nationally, about 10% of users have cable modems, and another 5% use DSL. The proportion of DSL use in the South is the smallest of any region in the country.

Internet users generally log on to the Web either from home or from the workplace. Nationally, about 86% of users go online at home, and about 50% use the Internet while at work. In the South, about 83% of Internet users have accessed the Net from home and about 48% have done so from their workplace.

On a typical day, about 75% of those Southerners go online will do so from home, a rate equal to the national average of 76%. Meanwhile, 41% of Southerners who use the Internet on an average day will go online in the workplace, equaling the national average.

About 60% of Southern users say they go online at least once a day – about a third (34%) do so several times a day. Nationally, about 37% go online several times a day, and 63% log on to the Internet at least once a day. Of the rest of the Southern users who access the Web less often, about 16% go online about three to five times a week; another 12% go online once or twice a week; and about 8% log on less often than that. Those proportions are almost the same as the national averages (16% go online 3-5 times a week, 12% log on once or twice a week, and about 6% go online less often than that).

When users go online on a typical day, about 62% will spend about an hour or less in cyberspace – 26% will spend thirty minutes or less and 36% will spend thirty minutes to an hour on the Web. In the South, 68% of Internet users will stay online for about an hour on an average day. About 28% will stay online for thirty minutes or less and 40% will stay online for about thirty minutes to an hour. An additional 7% will spend an hour to two hours online; 11% will stay on the Web for two to three hours; 4% will log on for three to fours hours on a typical day; and 10% are heavy users who spend more than fours online a day. These proportions are similar to the national averages.

Southerners find that access to online health-care information improves their overall ability to manage their health.  In March 2000, users were asked several questions about the extent to which the Internet had helped them improve some aspect of their daily life – shopping, getting health information, managing their finances, making connections to family and friends, learning new things, and pursuing a hobby.

As noted above, Southern Internet users are strong consumers of health-care information online. It follows, then, that those users believe that being able to access online health-care information has had a positive impact on their overall ability to manage their health. Nationally, 36% of Internet users say the Internet has improved their ability to get health-care information either a lot or somewhat. In the South, 43% say that this is the case. Another 14% say there has been “a little” improvement because of the Internet.

Using the Internet to aid in the pursuit of a hobby is a common activity. As noted above, 78% of users in the South have logged on to the Web because of a hobby. These users are pretty enthusiastic about what the Internet has been able to do to help them pursue their pastimes – 57% said that going online had helped a lot or somewhat. By comparison, 50% of users nationally said the same thing.

Nationally, 79% of Internet users say the Net has helped them learn new things. In the South, 84% of users say the same thing – one of the most enthusiastic responses in the country. Only the 85% of users in the Capital region are more enthusiastic.

Southerners agree with other Americans that the Internet has had a positive impact on their family relationships and friendships.

For the most part, users across the country agree that the Internet has been a positive force in their relationships with members of their family as well as their friends. Southern users agree. About 29% of users in the South said that the Internet had improved their connections to their family a lot, while another 22% saw some improvement. Interestingly, 35% of Southerners said that the Internet had not improved their relationships with other members of their family – the highest proportion to say so of any region in the country. Nationally, about 29% of Internet users said the same thing.

Users in the South are more likely to credit the Internet when it comes to their relationships with their friends. About 63% said that communicating via the Web had improved connections to their friends either a lot or somewhat. Nationally, about 61% said the same thing. Meanwhile, only 22% of Southern users noted no improvement, about the same proportion as Internet users nationally.

Southerners are less enthusiastic about shopping or getting financial information online.

Southern users have the sentiment, shared by many of their peers, that the Internet has not been of particular use in managing their finances. In the South, 60% of users said that going online had not improved the way they managed their finances at all. Nationally, 59% of users said the same thing. Only 24% of Southern users noted much improvement, which is about the same as the 27% of users across the country that said the same thing.

While shopping online is frequently cited as one of the most popular activities online, only 45% of users nationally have bought something online. Users are also ambivalent about whether or not the Internet has helped their ability to shop. About 34% of users said that the Internet helped either a lot or somewhat their ability to buy things. At the same time, about 44% said that they had seen no improvement at all. Users in the South tend to agree with this assessment. About 36% said they noted some or a lot of improvement in their shopping ability due to the Internet, and only 13% noted a lot of improvement. Meanwhile, 44% of Southerners online said the Internet had done nothing for their shopping ability.

The demographics of the Southern Internet population remained about the same between 2000 and 2001.

There was a moderate increase in the number of high school graduates into the Internet population, most likely reflecting the entrance of recent high school graduates who had first logged as teens. There was also a small increase in the proportion of African-Americans in the user population.

In terms of online activities, the proportions of Southern users doing certain things online fluctuated over time. There were some small increases in activities and some small decreases. There was a small increase in the proportion of users getting news online, already a popular activity among Southern users. On the other hand, the proportions of users doing job research and those going online “just for fun” fell moderately from 2000. There were also small drops in the percentages of users buying products online as well as using the Internet to find the answer to a particular question.

There were some changes in usage patterns among Internet users in the South between 2000 and 2001 as well. There was an increase in the proportion of users accessing the Web from the home, but a small decrease in the percentage of home users logging on during a typical day.

Some popular Web sites in the South

The table below lists the top five Web sites in Nashville in April 2003. Those sites are also the top five in the nation and they do not vary much region-by-region. In addition, the table highlights several regional sites that are in the top 25 most heavily used sites in the region during that month. A full listing of the top 25 sites in the region can be found in the spreadsheet that is available here: https://alpha.pewresearch.org/pewresearch-org/internet/releases/release.asp?id=66

The Industrial Midwest is one of the more wired regions in the United States and the percentage of novice users here is one of the highest nationwide.

Internet users in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan stand out against those in other regions of the country for several reasons:

• The user population in the Industrial Midwest has grown to 56% of all adults in 2002, up from 49% in 2000.
• The region’s proportion of Internet novices (six months’ experience on the Net or less) is one of the largest in the country.
• A slightly higher proportion of women in the region use the Internet than men. Nationally, the Internet population is evenly split.
• Users in the Industrial Midwest are firmly in the middle when it comes to most of the popular Net activities.
• Internet users in the region are fairly reserved when asked whether the Internet has improved their quality of life in specific ways, such as shopping, managing finances, or pursuing a hobby.
• Only 27% of users in the Industrial Midwest said the Net has helped them improve relationships with family members – one of the smallest percentages in the country. But users in the region are more apt to give the Internet credit when it comes to keeping in touch with friends; 55% say the Net has helped a lot or somewhat.

As in some other regions, growth in the user population in the Industrial Midwest has slowed substantially.

In 2001, 55% of adults were online, up substantially from 49% in 2000. However, between 2001 and 2002, the user population grew only one percentage point, to 56%. This leveling off indicates that growth in Internet usage in the Industrial Midwest has fallen behind national growth rates. Between 2001 and 2002, national Internet usage grew from 56% of adults to 59% of adults in 2002. In 2000, national Internet usage stood at 50% of adults.

The experience level of Internet users in the four states of the Industrial Midwest looks very similar to that of the national user population.

About 41% of users in the region are Web veterans with three or more years of online experience – about 3 percentage points below the national average of 44%. Another 37% have two to three years of online experience, while 14% have about a year online, and about 8% are Internet novices with six months or less online. Nationally, about 34% have been online for two to three years, another 15% have logged on for a year, and about 8% are Internet rookies. The proportion of Internet novices (those with less than six months’ experience) is one of the largest in the country, second only to the South, where 11% of users are novices.

The user population in the Industrial Midwest matches the national user population in income and education level.

About 25% of users in the Industrial Midwest live in households earning over $75,000 a year, which is slightly higher than the national average of 23%. Meanwhile, the size of every other household income bracket in the Industrial Midwest is the same as the national average. In the Industrial Midwest, about 18% of users live in households earning between $50,000 and $75,000, another 22% earn between $30,000 and $50,000, and about 19% take home under $30,000 a year.¹⁴

About 38% of Internet users in the Industrial Midwest have earned a college diploma or another advanced degree, compared with about 36% of users across the country. By comparison, in New England, which has the most educated Internet user population, about 41% of users are college educated. The South has the lowest proportion of college-educated Internet users (28%). Meanwhile, about a third (33%) of users in the Industrial Midwest have had some college experience, an additional 29% possess a high school diploma, and about 4% of users have less than a high school education. Nationally, about 30% of users have had some college coursework, an additional 29% have a high school diploma, and about 6% of users did not complete high school.

Internet users in the Industrial Midwest are overwhelmingly white. Users in this region include slightly more women and a larger proportion of young adults than other regions in the country.

The Internet population of the four states of the Industrial Midwest is overwhelmingly white – 85%. By comparison, whites make up about 78% of the national user population. The proportion of white Internet users in the region is one of the largest in the country, almost 23 percentage points higher than in California, which has the smallest proportion of whites in its user population (62%). The Upper Midwest has the largest proportion (93%). African-Americans make up 7% of users in the Industrial Midwest, and 4% of Hispanics;¹⁵ about 4% come from other races and ethnicities. Nationally, 8% of Web users are African-American, 9% are Hispanic, and 5% are from other races. The proportion of Hispanic users in the region is thus very small when compared with the national average. It stands to reason that the relatively small Hispanic population found in these states can explain this disparity. Likewise, Hispanics in the Industrial Midwest are less likely to use the Internet than their peers nationally.

Users in this region include slightly more women and a larger proportion of young adults than other regions in the country.

A slightly higher proportion of women than men use the Internet in the Industrial Midwest – 51% to 49%. Nationally, the split is even.

The Industrial Midwest has a young Internet population when compared with other parts of the country. About 19% of the Internet population in the region is made up of young adults between 18 and 24. This is slightly higher than the national proportion (17%) and is one of the largest proportions of young adult users in the country. Only California (20%) is higher; the Midwest and the Border States are tied with the Industrial Midwest at 19%, and the region with the smallest proportion of such users, New England has only 12%. An additional 23% of users in the Industrial Midwest are between the ages of 25 and 34; about 26% of users are between 35 and 44; about 19% are between 45 and 54; and 13% are over the age of 55, with 4% being seniors over 65. Nationally, about 23% of users are between 25 and 34; another 26% are between 35 and 44; 20% are between 45 and 54; and 14% are over 55, with 4% being over the age of 65.

About 64% of users in the region are employed full time, the same proportion as the national average. Another 15% work part time.

Users in the four states of the Industrial Midwest appear to engage in pretty much the same activities online as people all across the country.

Sending and receiving email is the Internet’s most popular activity, and 88% of users across the country report doing this. In the Industrial Midwest, about 87% of users have made use of email. About 58% of the region’s users have gotten news online, about 38% have sought financial information online, and 58% have looked for information related to their health. In addition, 42% have done work-related research on the Web, 77% have sought information related to a hobby, about 61% have gone online for no particular reason other than for “fun,” and 42% have bought something from an online merchant. When it comes to using the Internet to find the answer to a question, 74% of users in the Industrial Midwest have done so.

These proportions are roughly the same as for the national user population. Nationally, about 59% of users have gotten news from the Web, 38% have sought financial information online, and 56% have looked for health information. About 41% have done work-related research online, 78% of users have gone online looking for hobby information, about 61% have gone online “just for fun,” about 45% have bought something over the Internet, and 75% use the Internet to answer a question.

Users in the Industrial Midwest are firmly in the middle when it comes to the Web’s most popular activities. Users in other regions have shown that they like certain activities a lot more or a lot less. For instance, users in California (53%) and in New England (55%), who have higher levels of online experience, are more likely to have bought something from an online retailer. Meanwhile, users in the Pacific Northwest (49%), the Mountain States (53%), and the Upper Midwest (55%) are much less likely to go online for no particular reason other than for “fun.”

Users in the region are slightly less likely than other Americans to log on every day. On a typical day, about 55% of Internet users in the four states of the Industrial Midwest log onto the Web. This is slightly below the 57% of users nationally who use the Internet on an average day, and puts the region toward the lower end of average daily use. At one end of the spectrum, the region with the highest daily use is the Pacific Northwest (63%), and the region with the lowest is the South (51%). Daily usage in the Industrial Midwest is about the same as in the Southeast (55%) and the Upper Midwest (55%), two other regions with relatively inexperienced Internet populations. Regions with more experienced user populations, such as the Pacific Northwest (63%), New England (60%), and the National Capital (59%), also have the highest rates of typical day use of the Internet.

Users in these four states tend to log on from home using a standard dial-up connection. Once online, those in the Industrial Midwest are in the middle of the pack in terms of the level of Internet use.

When connecting to the Internet, 82% of home users in the Industrial Midwest use a standard dial-up connection, the same as the national average (82%). An additional 11% have high-speed cable modems, and about 3% have a DSL connection. Nationally, about 10% of home users have cable modems and 5% use DSL to log on to the Internet. The proportion of DSL use in the Industrial Midwest is the lowest of any region in the country, well behind California (10%), where it is most prevalent.

When logging onto the Net, the typical user will most likely do so either from home or from the workplace. Nationally, about 86% of users have gone online from home at one time or another, and about 50% have done so from the office. In the Industrial Midwest, users have logged from both at pretty much the same rate – 85% from home, and 48% from the office.

On a typical day, about 74% of daily users in the Industrial Midwest will log on to the Web from home. This rate of daily access from home is slightly under the national average of 76%. Meanwhile, 41% of those who go online on a typical day will do it from the job, about the same as the national average of 40%.

Once online, those in the Industrial Midwest are in the middle of the pack in terms of the level of Internet use.

About 60% of users in the Industrial Midwest use the Internet at least once a day and about 34% access the Net several times a day. By comparison, about 63% of the nation’s users use the Internet at least once a day, and about 37% go online several times. This puts users in the Industrial Midwest in the middle of the pack in terms of regional daily usage. The National Capital has the highest daily usage; 67% of users report logging on at least once a week, and 45% log on several times a day. In the region with the lowest rate, the South, about 60% of users log on at least once a day and 34% go online more than once. Meanwhile, 19% of users in the Industrial Midwest will log on to the Web about three to five times a week, 12% will use the Internet once or twice a week, and about 6% will go online even less than that. These proportions are almost the same as the national averages (16% go online three to five times a week, 12% log on once or twice a week, and about 6% go online less often than that).

When users go online on a typical day, about 62% will spend about an hour or less in cyberspace – 26% will spend thirty minutes or less and 36% will spend thirty minutes to an hour on the Web. In the Industrial Midwest about 64% of users will spend an hour or less online, with 24% staying in cyberspace for thirty minutes or less, and 40% using the Internet for about thirty minutes to an hour. An additional 8% will log on for an hour to two hours; 13% will use the Internet two to three hours a day; about 6% will stay online for three to four hours; and 10% are heavy users, spending four or more hours on the Web on an average day. These proportions are about the same as for the national user population.

Users in the Industrial Midwest are fairly reserved in their enthusiasm about the Internet’s ability to have a major, positive impact on their lives. In March 2000, users were asked several questions about the extent to which the Internet had helped them improve aspects of their daily life – shopping, getting health information, managing their finances, connecting with family and friends, learning new things, and pursuing a hobby.

Whether discussing their ability to shop, manage their finances, or keep in touch with their friends, users in the region do not laud the Internet as much as their peers in other parts of the country.

Almost half (48%) of users in the Industrial Midwest say the Internet has led to no improvement in their ability to shop. This is expected, given that online shopping is less popular in the region than in other parts of the country. By comparison, 44% of users nationwide said the Internet had no impact on their shopping ability. About 32% of users in the Industrial Midwest noted some or a lot of improvement in their shopping because of the Internet, compared with 34% of users nationally.

While searching for health information on the Web is one of the Internet’s more popular activities, users in the Industrial Midwest are lukewarm when it comes the Internet’s ability to improve the way they can get health care information. While 33% of users said the Internet had either improved a lot or somewhat their ability to find health information, 45% said they had seen no improvement whatsoever. Nationally, 36% of users laud the Internet a lot or somewhat in this regard, and 46% of users cite no improvement.

Users all over the country pretty much agree that the Internet has not had much of an impact on their ability to manage their finances. Nearly 60% of users nationwide said the Internet had had no impact whatsoever, and only about a quarter (27%) noted some or a lot of improvement. Users in the Industrial Midwest have an even lower opinion: About 62% said there was no improvement, and only 24% cited some or a lot of improvement (only 8% saw a lot of improvement, the lowest proportion of any region in the country).

The Internet is frequently praised for its ability to help users maintain and improve their connections with friends and family via email, instant messenger, and other programs. About 55% of users nationally said the Internet had helped improve their connections with family members either a lot or somewhat (31% said a lot). About 29% said the Internet had had no effect whatsoever. In the Industrial Midwest, just over half (51%) of users cited noted a lot or some improvement, while just under a third (32%) of users said the Internet had had no effect. Of note is that the 27% of users who said the Internet had helped them improve their relationships with members of their family a lot represents one of the smallest proportions of users to say so in the entire country; only the Mid-Atlantic (25%) reported less impact. By comparison, 38% of users in the Mountain states laud the Internet when it comes to connecting with family.

Users are more apt to give the Internet credit when it comes to relationships with friends than with family members. About 61% of Internet users nationwide say the Net has improved connections with their friends either a lot or somewhat (34% say there has been a lot of improvement). Only 22% say the Net has had no effect on those relationships. In the Industrial Midwest, users agree that the Internet has had a more positive impact on their relationships with friends than with family, but their enthusiasm is still tempered when compared with that of users in other parts of the country. In the four states of the Industrial Midwest, 55% of users say that the Internet has helped a lot or somewhat their connections with friends. But 26% said the Net didn’t do anything for their friendships–the largest proportion of users in the country to say so.

Nationally, 79% of users agree that the Internet has been a big help or somewhat of a help in their ability to learn new things, and only 10% of users say it has had no impact in this regard. For the most part, users in the Industrial Midwest agree with their peers, but not as strongly. About three-quarters of users in the region say the Internet has helped a lot or somewhat in their ability to learn new things, while 9% say it has had no effect. Again, the 42% of users in the region who said the Internet had improved their ability to learn new things was the second smallest proportion in the country to say so, behind only the Upper Midwest (39%). By comparison, 57% of users in the Border states say the Internet helped improve a lot their ability to learn new things.

Getting hobby information online is one of the Web’s most popular activities, and many users say the Internet has had a big impact on the way they pursue their hobbies. About half of all users nationwide say the Web has had a lot of impact or a somewhat positive impact, while 31% say there was no impact at all. Users in the Industrial Midwest agree, but less fervently. About 48% of users in the region saw some or a lot of improvement, while 31% saw no improvement at all. However, only 18% cited a lot of improvement, as opposed to the 22% of users nationally who said the same thing.

There was a surge of newcomers to the Internet in this region between 2000 and 2001.

As mentioned earlier, the biggest change from 2000 to 2001 was the surge of newcomers to the Internet in the Industrial Midwest. In 2000, just under half (49%) of adults in the region had used the Internet; by 2001, that figure had increased to 55%. Otherwise, there were no significant demographic changes to the region’s Internet population.

Between 2000 and 2001, users in the Industrial Midwest were less apt to use email, look for financial information, do research online for their job, buy something online, or turn to the Internet to answer a question. All these activities fell slightly, most likely due to the surge of newcomers to the Net in the region. These new users are less likely to engage in some of these activities as their more experienced peers. At the same time, there was a small up tick in the proportion of users getting news online.

There were a few changes in usage patterns among users in the region. Of note was a strong increase in the proportion of users accessing the Web from home. Also, there was a slight increase in the percentage of users staying online for more than four hours on a typical day. The proportion of users logging on to the Net on an average day also increased slightly.

Some popular Web sites in the Industrial Midwest

The tables below list the top five Web sites in Chicago and Detroit in April 2003. Those sites are also the top five in the nation and they do not vary much region-by-region. In addition, the table highlights several regional sites that are in the top 25 most heavily used sites in the region during that month. A full listing of the top 25 sites in the region can be found in the spreadsheet that is available here: https://alpha.pewresearch.org/pewresearch-org/internet/releases/release.asp?id=66

The Upper Midwest is close to the national average in the percentage of its population that uses the Internet.

Internet users in the four Upper Midwest states (Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, and South Dakota) stand out against those in other regions of the country for several reasons:

• They are more educated than the national average.
• The region has undergone strong growth in the number of adults using the Internet, from 49% in 2000 to 55% in 2001 to 59% in 2002.
• The Upper Midwest has the largest percentage of users with a middle range of online experience (two to three years using the Internet).
• The region has a high proportion of users aged 35 to 54 but has one of the nation’s smallest proportions of younger users (ages 18 to 24).
• Compared with users in other regions of the country, Upper Midwesterners are unlikely to credit the Internet with making substantial improvements in their lives. And they are even lukewarm about the Internet’s impact on improving connections with family and friends.

As in several other regions, Internet penetration in the Upper Midwest has steadily increased among adults since 2000.

In 2002, 59% of adults in the Upper Midwest were Internet users, a strong increase from 55% in 2001 and 49% of adults in 2000. Nationally, Internet penetration grew from 51% in 2000 to 56% in 2001 to 59% in 2002.

Most Internet users in the Upper Midwest have a moderate amount of experience online.

The user population in the Upper Midwest is not one of the nation’s most experienced, nor is it one of the most inexperienced. In fact, the Upper Midwest has the nation’s largest group (37%) of users in the country with a middle range of online experience – two to three years (nationally, about 34% have a similar level of Web use). Forty percent of users in the Upper Midwest are Web veterans with more than three years online. That is about 4 percentage points under the national average of 44%. About 14% of users in the region have about a year’s online experience, and about 9% are Internet rookies with less than six months online. Nationally, about 15% of users have about a year’s experience, and about 8% are Internet novices. Compared with other regions of the country, the Upper Midwest has one of the smallest proportions of Web veterans, second only to the South, where 36% of Internet users have been online for more than three years. By comparison, 50% of users in the Capital region have that level of Internet experience.

Levels of household income and education are strong determinants of Internet usage, and Internet users in the Upper Midwest are generally well educated and enjoy relatively high incomes. About 40% of Internet users in the region possess a college degree or an advanced graduate degree. This is about 4 percentage points higher than the national average of 36% and is one of the highest proportions of any region in the country, trailing only New England (41%), the Capital region (41%), and California (40%). An additional 26% of users in the Upper Midwest have had some college experience, while about 30% possess a high school diploma and 3% have less than a high school education. Nationally, about 30% of users have had some college class work, 29% have a high school degree, and about 6% never finished high school. The proportion of those without a high school degree in the Upper Midwest is the smallest of any region in the country, tied with the 3% in the National Capital region. Of note is that people from the Upper Midwest who have not completed college are less likely to use the Internet than their peers nationally – with the gap most pronounced with those who have some college experience.

The Upper Midwest has a substantial proportion of middle-income users. The region has the highest proportion of white Internet users of any in the country.

The Upper Midwest has a substantial proportion of middle-income users.

About 45% of users there fall into the middle income bracket (earning household incomes between $30,000 and $75,000 a year), with 24% earning between $30,000 and $50,000 per year, and another 21% earning between $50,000 and $75,000 a year. Nationally, 41% of users earn middle class household incomes (22% earn between $30,000 and $50,000, while 19% earn between $50,000 and $75,000 a year). Meanwhile, 18% of users in the Upper Midwest take home modest household incomes under $30,000 a year, just under the national average of 19%. At the other end of the scale, 24% of Upper Midwesterners online earn over $75,000 a year, just over the national average of 23%.¹⁵

The region has the highest proportion of white Internet users of any in the country.

Ethnically, the user population in the Upper Midwest is overwhelmingly white. Compared with the national average of 78%, 93% of users in the Upper Midwest are white. The proportion of African-American users – just under 2% – is less than a quarter of the national proportion of 8%. Hispanics¹⁶ make up only 3% of users in the Upper Midwest, one-third the national average of 9%, and 3% of the user population is composed of other ethnicities, slightly under the national average of 5%. In all, the Upper Midwest has the smallest proportion of minority Internet users in the country. This fact is best explained by the small minority populations that live in the states of the Upper Midwest. At the same time, while the Hispanic Internet population in the Upper Midwest may be small, Hispanics in general there are much more likely to use the Internet than Hispanics nationally. Two-thirds of Hispanics in the Upper Midwest use the Internet, compared with 54% nationally.

Women in the region are more likely to be online and men are less likely.

The ratio of male to female users in the Upper Midwest is 50-50, the same as for the national user population. Interestingly, women in the Upper Midwest are more likely to be Internet users than the national average – while at the same time men in the region are less likely than men nationally.

A higher proportion of Internet users in the region are middle-aged.

Compared with the age breakdown of the national Internet user population, the Upper Midwest has a higher proportion of users between the ages of 35 and 54. About half (49%) of the user population in the Upper Midwest is in this age bracket, about 3 percentage points higher than the nation as a whole. In the Upper Midwest, about 27% of users are between 35 and 44 and about 22% are between 45 and 54. Meanwhile, 15% are younger users between 18 and 24, 22% are between 25 and 34, and older users aged 55 and over account for about 14%. The proportion of younger users between 18 and 24 in the Upper Midwest is 2 percentage points lower than the national proportion and is one of the smallest in the country, trailing only New England (12%). Nationally, about 17% of users are between 18 and 24, an additional 23% are between 25 and 34, about 26% are between 35 and 44, 20% are between 45 and 54, and about 14% are over the age of 55. Meanwhile, younger adults in the Upper Midwest are much more likely to use the Internet than their peers across the country. At the same time, older adults there are less likely.

About 63% of Internet users in the Upper Midwest are employed full time, just under the national average of 64%. About 17% of users in the Industrial Midwest work part time, compared to 14% of users nationally.

Surfing the Net for fun, online shopping, and Internet news are not as popular in the Upper Midwest as elsewhere.

For the most part, Internet users in the Upper Midwest enjoy the Web’s more popular activities at the same rate as users in other regions of the country. However, there are a few notable differences.

Going online “just for fun,” or for no real reason, is not as popular an Internet pastime in the Upper Midwest as it is in other parts of the country. About 55% of users there have done this, compared with 61% of users across the country. In fact, only users in the Mountain states (53%) and in the Pacific Northwest (49%) are less likely than users in the Upper Midwest to browse cyberspace for the pleasure of it. Interestingly, Internet users in the next-door states of the Midwest are the most likely in the country (69%) to go online just for fun.

Users in the Upper Midwest are also wary of shopping online. Only about 37% of users there have bought something online, 8 percentage points lower than the national average of 45%. Only users in the Midwest (37%) are as skittish of buying things through online retailers. By comparison, 55% of users in New England have shopped online.

Getting the news online is not as common an activity in the Upper Midwest as it is in other parts of the country. Just over half (53%) of users there have sought news online, while about 59% of users across the country have done so. Only users in the Mountain States (51%) and the Pacific Northwest (53%) are less likely to have gotten the news online. At the other end of the scale, 64% of users in the Border States have gotten news on the Web.

When it comes to other popular activities on the Web, users in the Upper Midwest engage in them at much the same rate as their peers across the country. The Web’s most popular activity, email, has been used by 88% of those online in the Upper Midwest – nationally, the same proportion has used email. Meanwhile, about 41% of users in the Upper Midwest use the Internet to look for financial information; about 58% have looked for information regarding their health on the Web, 41% use the Internet to perform research at their jobs, 76% have gone online to look for information about their hobby, and about 72% have turned to the Web to look for the answer to a question they have. Nationally, 38% of users have sought financial information online, 56% have looked for health information, 41% use the Internet for research at their job, 78% of users use the Web to learn more about their hobby, and about 75% of users across the country have turned to the Internet to answer a question.

Those in the Upper Midwest are slightly less likely to access the Internet on a typical day. On an average day, about 55% of Internet users in the Upper Midwest venture into cyberspace, slightly under the national average of 57%. This places the region toward the lower end of the scale and is comparable with the Southeast and the Industrial Midwest, where a similar 55% of users will log on to the Net on a typical day. In the South, only 51% of users will do so, whereas 60% of users in New England and about 63% of users in the Pacific Northwest will make use of the Internet on an average day. These two regions lead the country in daily usage of the Web.

Most users in the region log on from home.

Fully 85% of users in the Upper Midwest who connect from home on any given day will log on to the Web using a standard dial-up connection. This is about 3 percentage points higher than the national average of 82%. An additional 3% of home users in the Upper Midwest have a DSL line and about 10% use a cable modem to hook up to the Internet. Nationally, about 5% of users access the Internet via a DSL line and 10% have cable modem access.

The home and the workplace are the two locations where the vast majority of Internet users access the Web. Nationally, about 86% of users have home access, while 50% of users have made use of the Internet at their job. In the Upper Midwest, about 84% of those using the Internet have accessed it from their home while about 51% have done so from their workplace.

On an average day, 74% of those in the Upper Midwest who log on will do so from home, a rate virtually equal to the national average of 76%. About 44% of those logging on during a typical day will do so from work. Nationally, about 40% of daily users will log on from their office.

About 60% of Internet users in the Upper Midwest say they use the Internet at least once a day, and 36% will go online several times over the course of the day. Nationally, about 63% of users log on at least once a day, and about 37% do so several times. The rate of daily access in the Upper Midwest is one of the lowest in the country, well behind the Capital region (67%) and the Border States (66%). In the Upper Midwest, an additional 19% of users access the Web about three to five times a week, the largest proportion of such users in the country; 10% log on once or twice a week; and 7% log on less than that. Nationally, about 16% log on three to five times a week, 12% use the Web once or twice a week, and about 6% go online less than that.

Users in the region spend an average amount of time online.

On a typical day, about 64% of the Internet users from the Upper Midwest who are online say they spend an hour or less online. Of those, 29% will spend about thirty minutes or less in cyberspace, while 35% will be online for thirty minutes to an hour. Nationally, 62% of users spend an hour or less on the Internet each day, 26% for thirty minutes or less and 36% for thirty minutes to an hour. Meanwhile, 9% of users in the Upper Midwest spend one to two hours online, about 14% log on for two to three hours, 4% spend three to four hours online, and 7% are heavy users who spend more than fours a day online. These proportions are virtually the same in the national user population.

Upper Midwest users are unlikely to believe that the Internet has substantially improved their lives. In March 2000, we asked users several questions about the extent to which the Internet had helped them improve some aspect of their daily life – shopping, getting health information, managing their finances, making connections to family and friends, and learning new things.

One thing that is clear about users in the Upper Midwest is that they are unlikely to credit the Internet with making substantial improvements in their lives. Other than approving of how the Internet has helped their connections with their friends and family, users in the Upper Midwest do not see much of an improvement in their ability to shop, handle their finances, find health care information, pursue their hobbies, or even learn new things as compared with users in other parts of the country.

As noted earlier, users in the region are less inclined to shop online than their peers elsewhere in the country, and their opinions regarding the Internet’s effect on their ability to do so reflect this. Only 9% of users said the Internet had helped their ability to shop “a lot,” while 21% saw “some” improvement. Nationally, 15% cited a large improvement, and an additional 20% credited the Internet with some improvement. Meanwhile, 51% of users in the Upper Midwest said the Internet had no effect on their shopping ability, 7 percentage points higher than the national average and the largest proportion in any region of the country. By comparison, 43% of users in the Capital region said the Internet had helped their ability to shop either a lot or somewhat; 19% saying it had helped a lot.

Getting health care information online has become one of the Web’s most popular activities, and 36% of users nationwide say the Internet has improved their ability to get such information either a lot (16%) or somewhat (20%). Users in the Upper Midwest aren’t so sure; only 7% are willing to give the Internet a lot of credit, and an additional 18% give the Web some credit. At the same time, 52% of users in the region say the Internet hasn’t helped at all. The proportion of users who say that is 6 percentage points higher than the national average and is the largest of any region in the country. Also, the 7% who ascribe a large improvement to the Internet is by far the smallest proportion of users to say so in the entire country – the next lowest is the Pacific Northwest, with 12%.

Most Internet users do not credit the Internet with helping their ability to manage their finances. This opinion is held by 59%, and only about a quarter say the Web has helped a lot or somewhat. Users in the Upper Midwest are more vociferous – 65% say the Internet hasn’t improved their ability to manage their finances, and only 21% of users credit the Internet with a lot of or some improvement.

The ability to learn new things is one of the more popular features of the Internet, and users across the country agree wholeheartedly – 47% say the Internet has helped their ability to learn new things a lot, and an additional 32% say the Web has helped somewhat. Only 10% of users nationwide say they haven’t seen much improvement in this area. Users in the Upper Midwest agree with these sentiments – about 39% say the Internet has helped their ability to learn new things a lot, and an additional 41% credit the Internet with some improvement. Only 7% of users in the Upper Midwest cite no improvement, one of the smallest proportions of users in the country.

Users in the region are the least enthusiastic about using the Internet to improve their relationships with family and friends. There was a significant increase in the proportion of adults online in the Upper Midwest between 2000 and 2001.

As spelled out in the Pew Internet Project’s first report, “Tracking Online Life,” the Internet has been a huge boon to those wishing to foster communication with friends and family members. About 55% of users nationally say the Internet has helped them improve connections with family members, and 61% say the Web helped them improve connections with friends. In the Upper Midwest, 52% of users credit the Internet with helping their relationships with their friends, and 55% said the same thing about family members. This somewhat lukewarm endorsement of the Internet’s ability to help improve relationships with friends is the least enthusiastic response of any region in the country, and about 24% said the Internet had had no effect whatsoever. For the most part, Internet users tend to be more enthusiastic about the Internet when it comes to keeping in touch with friends rather than families, but the opposite is true among users in the Upper Midwest. Moreover, 29% of users there said the Internet had not helped their relationships with family members either.

There was a significant increase in the proportion of adults online in the Upper Midwest between 2000 and 2001.

The largest change between 2000 and 2001 among Internet users in the Upper Midwest was the strong growth in the percentage of adult users, from 49% in 2000 to 55% in 2001. Otherwise, there were no significant demographic changes.

In 2001, users in the Upper Midwest were slightly less likely to have engaged in many Internet activities, partly reflecting the surge of new users to the Web. Users there were less likely to use email, gotten news, sought financial information, done research for their job, gone online just for fun, or bought a product online. At the same time, however, there was a slight up tick in the proportion of users seeking health information on the Web.

Among usage patterns, most significant was the strong growth in the proportion of users going online from home. Accordingly, there was also a significant increase in the percentage of users accessing the Internet from home on a typical day. At the same time, there was a decrease in the percentage of users going online from work on an average day.

Some popular Web sites in the Upper Midwest

The table below lists the top five Web sites in Minneapolis-St. Paul in April 2003. Those sites are also the top five in the nation and they do not vary much region-by-region. In addition, the table highlights several regional sites that are in the top 25 most heavily used sites in the region during that month. A full listing of the top 25 sites in the region can be found in the spreadsheet that is available here: https://alpha.pewresearch.org/pewresearch-org/internet/releases/release.asp?id=66

Lower Midwesterners rank slightly below the national average in Internet usage.

Users in the five states in the region (Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma) stand out for a number of reasons:

• Lower Midwestern Internet users as a group are more educated than the national average.
• The region has the highest proportion of low-household income users of any region in the country, and the highest proportion of seniors.
• Lower Midwesterners are among the largest consumers of online news. And they are more likely than anyone else in the country to surf the Web “just for fun.”
• Like their neighbors in the Upper Midwest (Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, and South Dakota), users in the region are somewhat lukewarm in their assessment of how the Internet has improved their lives.

There is a growing gap between Internet use in the region and the rest of the nation.

In 2002, Internet penetration in the Lower Midwest continued to lag behind the national penetration rate, and the gap between Internet usage in the Lower Midwest and nationwide has steadily increased between 2000 and 2001. In 2002, 55% of adults in the Lower Midwest had been online, up from 54% in 2001 and 50% in 2000. At the same time, national Internet usage has grown from 50% of adults in 2000 to 56% in 2001 and 59% in 2002. Also of note is the virtual halt in growth in Internet penetration in the region between 2001 and 2002, which can also be observed in other parts of the country, like the Mid-Atlantic, the Industrial Midwest, and the Border States.

Almost half of Internet users in the region have been online for three or more years. The experience level of Internet users in the Lower Midwest is similar to that of the national Internet user population. About 46% of users are Web veterans with three or more years online; nationally, about 44% of users are Web veterans. An additional 33% of Web users in the Midwest have been online for about two or three years, about 16% have about a year’s worth of experience, and 5% are Internet rookies who have been logging on to the Web for about six months. In the nation, 34% of users have been online for two to three years, 15% have logged on for about a year; and 8% have been online for six months or less. These findings place the Midwest squarely in the middle relative to other regions of the country. The Midwest lags regions such as the Capital region, where 50% are Web veterans, and the Pacific Northwest (50%), but is well ahead of less-wired parts of the country such as the South (36%) and the neighboring Upper Midwest (40%).

Internet users in the Midwest are generally well educated and middle income.

About 39% have graduated from college or have other advanced degrees; nationally, about 36% of Internet users have a similar level of education. The proportion of college-educated users in the Lower Midwest is larger than the proportion of similar users in such regions as the South (28%) and the Border States (31%), but smaller than in well-educated regions of the country such as the National Capital Region (41%) and New England (41%). An additional 27% of Lower Midwest Internet users have had some college experience, another 28% have a high school diploma, and about 7% never finished high school. Nationally, about 30% of users went to college but didn’t graduate, about 29% have a high school diploma, and about 6% have less than a high school education. The 7% of users in the Lower Midwest who did not finish high school represents the largest proportion of such users in the country. It is more than twice the percentage of such users in the Upper Midwest (3%). The Border States also have a high proportion (6%) of users without high school educations.

Much like their peers in the Upper Midwest, Lower Midwesterners using the Internet tend to be in the middle-income brackets, and the proportion of users there with large household incomes is the smallest in the country. The region also has one of the largest cohorts of users earning modest household incomes under $30,000. Fully 49% of users in the Midwest earn between $30,000 and $75,000, with 28% taking home between $30,000 and $50,000 a year, and another 21% earning between $50,000 and $75,000 per year. Nationally, 41% earn between $30,000 and $75,000, with 22% taking home between $30,000 and $50,000 a year and 19% earning between $50,000 and $75,000. Meanwhile, only 17% of users in the Lower Midwest earn over $75,000 a year, well under the 23% of users nationally with similar household incomes, and the smallest cohort of such users in the country. At the other end of the scale, 22% of users in the Lower Midwest earn modest incomes under $30,000 a year, one of the largest groups of such users in the country, and higher than the 19% of users nationally.¹⁸

The user population of the Lower Midwest is predominantly white, but the region also has a larger share of African-American users compared with its neighbors.

About 87% of users in the Lower Midwest are white, much higher than the national average of 78%; the only region with a larger proportion of white users is the Upper Midwest. At the same time, the region has a relatively small minority population when compared to other parts of the country. About 7% of users in the Lower Midwest are African-American, slightly lower than the national average of 8% but much higher than the average for users in neighboring regions. For instance, only 1% of users in the Upper Midwest are African-American, and only 1% of users in the Mountain states. African-Americans in the Lower Midwest are more likely to use the Internet than African-Americans generally across the country. Meanwhile, only 2% of Internet users in the Lower Midwest are Hispanic¹⁹, less than a quarter the proportion of Hispanic users in the national user population (9%). An additional 4% of users in the region come from other races and ethnicities, just under the national average of 5%.

More women than men in the region are online.

Unlike almost every other region in the country, the Lower Midwest has a higher proportion of female users than male users. Nationally, the Internet population is split 50-50; in the Lower Midwest, however, 52% of users are women and 48% are men. Only the Mid-Atlantic region (54%) and the Mountain States (53%) have larger proportions of women users.

The region’s Internet users mirror national patterns for age, except for the large proportion of seniors.

The Lower Midwest Internet population is rather evenly distributed across all the age groups, and is quite similar in age breakdown to the national Internet population. In the region, about 19% of users are young adults between 18 and 24, 20% are aged between 25 and 34, about 23% are between 35 and 44. An additional 23% are between 45 and 54, and about 15% of users are aged 55 and older. Nationally, about 17% of users are between 18 and 24, and 23% are between 25 and 34. About 26% are between 35 and 44, an additional 20% are between 45 and 54, and about 14% are over the age of 55. Of note is that 5% of users in the Lower Midwest are seniors aged 65 and older, one of the largest proportions of seniors online in the country (nationally, about 4% of those 65 and older are logging onto the Web). The proportion of senior users in the Midwest is about twice that in Mid-Atlantic region, the Capital Region, and the South (all 3%).

In the Lower Midwest, about 65% of Internet users are employed full time, a slightly larger proportion than in the national Internet population, where about 64% have full-time jobs. Meanwhile, 16% of the region’s users are employed part time – again, slightly higher than the national average, which is 14%.

Lower Midwesterners do have some clear likes and dislikes compared with users elsewhere.

For the most part, Lower Midwesterners who log on to the Internet enjoy the same online activities such as email or looking for health information as their peers in other parts of the country. However, gathering news online is a favorite activity in the Lower Midwest, something that 65% of Web users have done at one time or another. Nationally, about 60% of users have done this, and the proportion of Lower Midwestern Internet news consumers is one of the largest in the country. Other regions with high levels of online news usage are the Mid-Atlantic (61%), the National Capital region (62%), the Border States (64%) and the South (63%). Interestingly, looking for news online in the Lower Midwest ranks much higher than in the neighboring Upper Midwest, where only 53% of Internet users have done this.

Going online just for fun is also very popular in the Lower Midwest – some 70% of users there have logged on just to pass the time, compared with 61% of users nationally. The Lower Midwest leads all regions of the country in this. By comparison, only about half (49%) of users in the Pacific Northwest claim to have gone online just for fun, and only about 53% of users in the Mountain states. Only about 55% of users in the neighboring Upper Midwest have surfed the Internet for no particular reason.

One online activity that users in the Lower Midwest are wary of is online shopping. Only about 37% of users there have bought something online, the smallest proportion of any region in the country. Nationally, about 45% of Internet users have bought something through a Web site. Users in the Upper Midwest (37%) are equally as wary of online shopping as Lower Midwesterners are; in contrast, 55% of users in New England have bought something through the Internet.

Lower Midwesterners are also relatively wary about seeking financial information via the Internet. Only 31% of users there have done so, in contrast to the 38% of users who have done so nationally. Once again, the Lower Midwest has one of the lowest rates of Internet use for this purpose of any region in the country.

As for other popular activities on the Internet, Lower Midwestern users enjoy them at much the same rates as their peers. Email is by far the Web’s most popular online activity, and 89% of users in the region use it. Meanwhile, about 59% have sought health information online, 42% have done online research for their job, 77% have sought information about their hobbies on the Internet, and about 78% have turned to the Web to answer a question. Nationally, about 88% of users have sent or received email, 56% have sought health information, 41% have done online job research, 78% have sought information about a hobby, and 75% have turned to the Internet to answer a question.

Users in the region are slightly more likely to log on during an average day. There is high use of high-speed cable modems at home, but Lower Midwesterners are the least likely to log on from home.

On a typical day, about 58% of Internet users in the Lower Midwest will log on to the Web. This rate is slightly higher than the national average of 57%. Compared with other regions, this rate of daily access is somewhat high and approaches rates in such highly wired regions as the National Capital region (59%) and New England (60%). The region with the highest daily access is the Pacific Northwest, where 63% of users log on to the Web on a typical day. The lowest is the South (51%).

There is high use of high-speed cable modems at home.

In the Lower Midwest, a surprisingly large proportion of home-based Internet users (12%) access the Internet via high-speed cable modems. This puts the region second behind New England (16%) and tied with the Mid-Atlantic (12%) in this category; nationally, about 10% of users have access to cable modems. About 80% of home Internet users in the Midwest log on to the Net via a standard dial-up connection, and 4% have access to a DSL line. Nationally, about 82% of users use a dial-up connection, and about 5% use a DSL connection.

But Lower Midwesterners are the least likely to log on from home.

When going online, users generally do so from either the home or the workplace. In the Lower Midwest, about 82% of users have home access, while 51% have gone online from work. The rate of home access is well below the national average of 86% and gives the Lower Midwest the lowest rate of home access of any region in the country. To illustrate how far behind the region is in home access to the Internet, the region with the next lowest rate of home access is the South, with 83%. However, the proportion of Internet users in the Lower Midwest using the Internet while at work is on par with the national average of 50%.

On an average day, 73% of those Lower Midwestern Internet users who go online will access the Web from home; nationally, about 76% of users will do so. This daily rate of home access, like the overall home access rate mentioned above, places the region near the bottom. The only region with a lower rate of daily home access is the National Capitol region, where 71% of users will log on from the home. By comparison, 84% of home users in the Pacific Northwest will use the Internet from home on a typical day. About 39% of Lower Midwesterners logging on during a typical day will access the Internet at work, just under the national average of 40%.

About 62% of Lower Midwestern Internet users say they log on to the Web at least once a day, and 36% use the Internet several times a day. These proportions are just about the same as for the national Internet population. The National Capital region has the highest daily usage; 67% of users there report logging on at least once a week, and 45% log on several times a day. In the region with the lowest rate of daily usage, the South, about 60% of users log on at least once a day, and 34% go online more than once. At the same time, 17% of users in the Lower Midwest use the Internet three to five times a week, about 12% go online once or twice a week, and 6% log on less than once a week.

On an average day, about 61% of Americans who are using the Internet will spend an hour or less online – 26% will log on for thirty minutes or less, while 36% will stay for thirty minutes to an hour. In the Lower Midwest, 63% of users will use the Internet for an hour or less; 27% will spend thirty minutes or less, while 34% will spend thirty minutes to an hour online. Meanwhile, 7% of Lower Midwestern users will spend about an hour to two hours online on an average day, about 14% will spend two to three hours online, 7% are online for three to fours a day, and about 10% are heavy Web users who spend more than four hours a day online. These proportions are virtually the same as for the national user population.

Lower Midwesterners are lukewarm about the impact of the Internet on their lives. In March 2000, users were asked several questions about the extent to which the Internet had helped them improve some aspect of their daily life – shopping, getting health information, managing their finances, connecting with family and friends, and learning new things.

Like their neighbors in the Upper Midwest, Lower Midwesterners are relatively muted in their appraisal of the Internet’s effect on their day-to-day lives. While they share the common enthusiasm for the Internet’s ability to improve their communication with friends and family, users in the Lower Midwest are ambivalent about how it has helped them with other activities. However, users in the region are pretty enthusiastic about the Internet’s ability to help them to learn new things.

About 55% of users nationwide say the Internet has had an impact on their relationships with members of their family, and 61% say the Web has had a positive impact on their relationships with friends (“a lot” or “some”). As for Lower Midwesterners, about 58% say that the Internet has had an impact on their relationships with family members, while 60% say the same thing about their friends. At the same time, a quarter of Lower Midwestern users say the Internet has had no effect on their relationships with their family, and 20% say the same thing about relationships with friends. However, both these proportions are smaller than for the national user population, 29% of whom saw no effect with family and 22% of whom saw none with friends.

The Internet is a rich resource for information, and nationally, 79% of users agree that it has had an impact on their ability to learn new things. Only 10% say the Internet has not affected their ability in any way. Users in the Lower Midwest are just as enthusiastic about the ability of the Internet to help them learn new things – 78% say it has had an impact, and only 12% see no impact whatsoever. In fact, 49% say the Internet has had a large impact on their ability to learn new things, one of the largest groups of any region in the country. Only the Southeast (51%), the National Capital region (52%) and the Border States (57%) were more enthusiastic.

When it comes to shopping, however, users in the Lower Midwest are not very enthusiastic about the Internet’s ability to help them. Only 7% of users there credit the Internet with having a big impact, and an additional 26% credit the Internet with having some impact. Fully 48% of users in the region say the Internet has done nothing to improve their ability to shop; only the Upper Midwest (51%) is more skeptical. Nationally, 34% of users credit the Internet with having some impact on their shopping (15% saw a large impact), while 44% said the Internet had done nothing for their shopping ability.

Getting health information online is one of the Web’s more popular activities, as well as one of its most important. Fully 36% of users nationwide say the Internet has had an impact on their ability to get health care information, and 16% give the Web a lot of credit. While 34% of users in the Lower Midwest say the Internet has helped them search for health information, 52% say the Internet has had no effect whatsoever. The Upper Midwest (52%) is equally dismissive of the Internet’s ability to help with getting heath information, and the two regions lead the country in this skepticism.

Nationwide, the Internet gets little credit for helping people manage their finances; 59% of users feel it has had no impact whatsoever. Only 27% feel it has made any impact in this area, and just 12% credit the Internet with a large impact. In the Lower Midwest, 62% of Internet users feel the Internet has done nothing to help them manage their finances, and only 21% note any impact (11% credit the Internet with helping them a lot).

There was significant growth in the proportion of adults using the Internet in the region between 2000 and 2001.

As mentioned, the most significant change was the solid growth in the percentage of adults in the Lower Midwest using the Internet, from just under 50% in 2000 to 54% in 2001. Demographically, there were slight increases in the proportion of African-Americans in the Lower Midwestern Internet user population and in the proportion of users aged 45 and 54. There was also a solid increase in the proportion of college-educated users.

Between 2000 and 2001, some online activities attracted more Lower Midwesterners and some activities were less favored. They were more likely to have sought news online, to have looked for health information, and to have turned to the Internet to answer a question in 2001 than they were in 2000. At the same time, they became less likely to use email, do job research on the Internet, or buy a product online. And they were a lot less likely to have sought financial information on the Web.

Usage patterns in the Lower Midwest remained stable between 2000 and 2001. There were solid increases in the percentages of users logging on to the Net from both the home and from the workplace, with a slightly larger increase at home. However, there was a slight decrease in the proportion of home users who logged on from home on an average day.

Some popular Web sites in the Lower Midwest

The table below lists the top five Web sites in St. Louis in April 2003. Those sites are also the top five in the nation and they do not vary much region-by-region. In addition, the table highlights several regional sites that are in the top 25 most heavily used sites in the region during that month. A full listing of the top 25 sites in the region can be found in the spreadsheet that is available here: https://alpha.pewresearch.org/pewresearch-org/internet/releases/release.asp?id=66

The Border States make up one of the more highly wired regions of the country.

Internet users in these three states (Texas, New Mexico, Arizona) also stand out for a number of reasons:

• The Border States have one of the largest concentrations of Hispanic users in the country.
• Border States Internet users tend to have less education and lower household incomes than the national average.
• Users in the Southwest are among the most likely to have gotten news online.
• Border States users are also more likely to use the Internet for job research than users in other parts of the country.
• Southwestern users tend to be very enthusiastic about the positive effects of the Internet on different aspects of their lives.

Growth in the proportion of adults using the Internet has leveled off in the Border States. As in some other regions (the Mid-Atlantic, the Industrial Midwest) growth in Internet usage among adults in the Border States leveled off between 2001 and 2002. In 2002, 60% of adults in the region reported they were Internet users, which is only one percentage point higher than the access rate in 2001. By comparison, national Internet penetration stood at 59% in 2002 and 56% in 2001. In 2000, 53% of adults in the Southwest had used the Internet, higher than the 50% of adults nationally. While the Border States region has traditionally been more highly wired than other regions of the country, the slowdown in growth is notable.

Internet users in this region have average levels of online experience, but their income and education levels are lower.

The experience level of Internet users in the Border States is about the same as the national average. In 2001, about 45% of users in the Southwest were Internet veterans with three or more years of online experience. This is virtually the same as the national average of 44%. About 33% of users in the Border States region have been online for two to three years, 13% have about a year’s worth of experience, and about 8% are Internet rookies with six months or less of Web time. These proportions are virtually the same as the averages for the nation as a whole, where 34% of users have been online for two to three years, 15% have been online for a year, and 8% are new to the Internet. Relative to other regions of the country, the Border States are squarely in the middle when it comes to online experience. The National Capital region (50%) and the Pacific Northwest (50%) have higher proportions of veteran users, but the Border States are well ahead of the South (where 36% are Web vets) and the Upper Midwest (40%).

The household income and education levels of Web users in the Border States are below the national averages. About 31% of users in the Southwest possess college diplomas or other advanced degrees. This is about 5 percentage points less than the national average of 36%. The proportion of college-educated users is the second lowest in the country after the South, where only 28% of users are similarly educated. By comparison, about 41% of Internet users in New England are college graduates. About a third (34%) of users in the Southwest have had some college experience, slightly higher than the national average of 30%; about 29% of Border States users have high-school diplomas, and about 6% have less than a high-school education. These proportions are exactly the same nationally – 29% of users nationwide have a high-school education, and 6% possess less than a high-school education.

Compared with other regions of the country, the proportion of users with less than a high-school education in the Southwest is one of the largest. The lower level of education among users in the Border States is, among other things, explained by the relative youthfulness of the user population.

Household income distribution among Internet users in the Border States is concentrated at the extremes – the region has a large proportion of wealthy users, as well as having the largest proportion of users earning modest household incomes. Wealthy users earning over $75,000 a year constitute 24% of the Southwestern user population, while 23% of users there earn less than $30,000. The proportion of wealthy users in the Southwest is slightly larger than the national average of 23%. At the same time, the proportion of low-income users in the Southwest is the largest in the country, and is greater than the national average of 19%. Meanwhile, another 23% of users in the Southwest earn between $30,000 and $50,000 a year, while another 16% earn between $50,000 and $75,000. Nationwide, 22% and 19% of users earn those amounts, respectively.²⁰

There is a large proportion of Hispanic Internet users, and the user population is slightly more female and slightly younger than elsewhere.

The Border States are tied with California for having the largest proportion of Hispanic²¹ users in the country at 21%, more than twice the national average of 9%. The region with the next highest proportion of Hispanic Web users is the Southeast (which includes Florida), where 14% of users identify themselves as Hispanics. Clearly, this statistic is influenced by the great numbers of Hispanics who live in the Border state region. Meanwhile, 67% of the users in the Southwest are whites, almost 11 percentage points lower than the national rate of 78%–the second lowest proportion of white users anywhere in the country. (California has the smallest proportion of white users, about 62%). African-Americans make up about 9% of the Southwestern Internet population, just a touch higher than the national average (8%). An additional 4% of the user population is made up of other races and ethnicities.

The user population is slightly more female and slightly younger than elsewhere.

In terms of gender, the user population in the Border States has slightly more females than males – females make up about 52% of users. Nationally, the ratio is 50-50. The Border States are one a few regions of the country with a larger proportion of women than men – the Mid-Atlantic region (54% women), the Industrial Midwest (51%), the Midwest (52%), and the Mountain region (53%) all have more women users.

The user population of the Border States is slightly younger than the national user population. In the region, about 19% of users are young adults between 18 and 24, and 26% are between 25 and 34. Nationally, 17% of users are between 18 and 24, and 23% are between 25 and 34. The proportion of users in the 18-to-24 age bracket is one of the largest in the country, behind only California (20%). At the same time, the proportion of users in the 25-to-34 age bracket is the largest of any region in the country. Meanwhile, 25% of users in the Border States are between 35 and 44, 18% are aged between 45 and 54, and about 12% are over 55. Nationally, 26% of users are between 35 and 44, 20% are between 45 and 54, and about 14% are over 55.

About 64% of users in the Border States are employed full time, equal to the national average of 64%. And 13% have part-time jobs – the national average is 14%.

Users in the Border States have some distinct preferences when they use the Internet.

Internet users in the Border States region enjoy the Web’s most popular activities at much the same rate as their peers, whether they are getting news or logging on just for fun.

Fully 64% of users in the region have gone online to get news, the highest rate of any region in the country and a figure over the national average of 59%. By comparison, Southerners (63%) are almost as enthusiastic about online news, while only 53% of users in the Pacific Northwest have turned to the Internet for news.

Another Web activity that the region’s users like is surfing online — “just for fun.” About 64% of Web users in the Border States have done this, compared with about 61% of users nationwide. This proportion is one of the largest in the country, behind 70% of users in the Midwest and 67% of users in the South. By contrast, only 49% of users in the Pacific Northwest claim to have gone online for no real reason.

Using the Web at work for research purposes is one online activity that is more popular in this region than in other parts of the country. In the Border States, about 44% of users have done this – nationally, about 41% have done so. The proportion of users in the Border States is the second largest in the country, behind only New England (45%). In contrast, only 38% of users in the Pacific Northwest and only 39% of users in the Mid-Atlantic have done job research online.

As for other popular Internet activities, users in the Border States engage in them at much the same rate as their peers around the country. Email is by far the Web’s most popular activity, and fully 88% of users nationwide have sent or received an email. In this region, too, 88% of users have email accounts. There is little variation among the regions when it comes to email usage; users vary from 91% in the Mountain states and Pacific Northwest to 87% in the South.

Meanwhile, 39% of users in the region have gone online to seek financial information; 54% use the Web to find health information; 76% use the Internet to help pursue their hobbies; 46% have bought a product from an Web site; and 78% of users say they turn to the Internet when they needed to find the answer to a question. The national averages are about 38% for seeking financial information, 56% for looking up health care information, 78% for looking for information about a hobby, 45% for buying anything through the Internet, and about 75% for using the Internet to answer a question.

There are some interesting regional variations in Internet use in the Border States.

While well behind such well-connected regions as California (53%) and New England (55%) when it comes to online shopping, users in the Border States (46%) appear to be more comfortable with it than users in other parts of the country. For instance, only 37% of users in the Lower Midwest have bought something online, along with only 37% of users in the Upper Midwest. In fact, users in the Border States appear somewhat more comfortable with online shopping than their peers in the highly connected Pacific Northwest, where 41% of users have bought something through a Web site.

Other interesting variations:

• Southern users (61%) are more likely to go online for health information than users in the Border States (54%), who at the same time are more likely to have done so than users in the Pacific Northwest (49%).
• Border States users (64%) are much more likely to have gotten news online than users in such highly connected regions as California (54%), New England (58%), and the Pacific Northwest (53%).
• Californians (83%) and New Englanders (81%) are much more likely to use the Web for their hobbies than are users in the Border States (76%).

Users in the Border States mirror national trends in their use of the Internet.

On an average day, about 58% of users in the Border States log on to the Internet, virtually the same as the national average of 57%. The region is squarely in the middle when compared with other regions of the country. At the high end, 63% of users in the Pacific Northwest log on an average day; at the low end, only 51% of Southern users do so. The rate of daily usage in the Border States is the same as in California (58%), the Midwest (58%), the National Capital Region (59%), and the Mountain States (57%).

When Internet users log on to the Web, they usually do so from either their home or their workplace. Nationally, 86% of Internet users have gone online from their home, and about 50% of users have done so from their workplace. In the Border States, users are just as likely to go online from home (85%) and slightly more likely to have done so at the office (52%). The rate of home access in the region places it in the lower half of all the regions in the country – while well ahead of the Lower Midwest, where home access stands at 82% of users, the region is well behind the Mountain region (90%). This rate of work access in the Border States is much higher than the region with the lowest rate of work access, the Pacific Northwest – only 46% of users there use the Web at work.

Some 77% of users in the Border States who go online on an average day connect to the Web from home. Nationally, about 77% of users report the same rate of Internet use. Meanwhile, the daily rate of home usage in the Border States is well behind the 84% of daily users in the Pacific Northwest who log on from home.

Of those who log on during an average day, 39% of users in the region will use the Web at work; nationally, about 40% of such users will do the same thing. While the rate of work access among daily users is one of the highest in the country, the rate of those who log on daily at work is average when compared with other regions. For instance, 52% of those who use the Internet at work in the National Capital region log on daily from their jobs, along with 44% in New England. Only the 34% of those with work access in the Pacific Northwest and the 37% of those with such access in California are less likely to log on to the Web from work than are their peers in the Border States.

When users in the Border States go online, two thirds of them will log at least once a day. About 40% say they log on several times a day, well above the national average of 37%. In fact, this proportion is exceeded only by users in the National Capital Region (45%), and is larger than those in such highly wired regions with experienced users as New England (38%), the Mountain states (35%), and the Pacific Northwest (38%). About 27% of users in the Border States will go online about once a day, 12% will use the Internet three to five times a week, 13% will log on once or twice a week, and about 5% use the Web less often than that. Nationally, 26% of users log on about once a day, 16% will use the Internet three to five times a week, about 12% will go online once or twice a week, and about 6% will use the Web even less often.

The region has the largest number of people who are online for more than four hours a day.

Of those users in the Border States who go online on any given day, 61% will spend about an hour or less online, with about 24% using the Internet for thirty minutes or less, and about 37% logging on for thirty minutes to an hour. Nationwide, 62% of users will spend an hour or less online on a typical day, with 26% staying on for thirty minutes or less and 36% spending thirty minutes to an hour. Among the heavy daily users in the region, 7% spend about an hour to two hours online, 14% spend two to three hours on the Web, about 4% stay online for three to four hours, and another 13% will spend four or more hours online. In comparison, 8% of users nationally spend an hour to two hours on the Web, 12% are online for two to three hours a day, about 5% use the Internet for three to four hours, and about 11% are online for four or more hours a day. Interestingly, the 13% of users in the Border States who spend four or more hours online on a typical day is among the largest groups of such users in the entire country.

When users in the Southwest connect to the Internet from home, 84% of them use a standard dial-up connection, compared with 82% of users nationally. About 5% of Border State users have a DSL line at home, and 8% have cable modem connections. Nationally, 5% of users have DSL, and about 10% use cable modems when logging onto the Internet.

Border States users are highly enthusiastic about the Internet’s impact on their lives, particularly their ability to learn new things.

In the spring of 2000, the Pew Internet & American Life Project asked respondents how the Internet had affected different facets of their lives. Respondents were asked to assess the impact of the Internet on their ability to shop, their ability to get information about health care, their ability to manage their finances, and their ability to learn new things. They were also asked to assess the impact of the Web on the their hobbies and on their connections with friends and members of their family.

Users in the Border States are the most enthusiastic about the Internet’s impact on their ability to learn new things. Fully 57% of users in the region said they had seen “a lot” of improvement in their ability to learn new things because of the Web. This is 10 percentage points higher than the proportion of users nationally who said the same thing. Another 26% of users in the region said they had seen “some” improvement. This enthusiasm contrasts vividly with that of users in the Upper Midwest, where only 39% said the Internet had had a large impact.

It appears that those in the region who are using the Web to help them pursue their hobbies are seeing a significant impact. Fully 32% said the Internet had improved their ability to pursue their hobby “a lot,” while an additional 27% said the Internet had had “some” impact. Nationally, only about 22% of users were willing to grant the Internet a lot of credit, and an additional 29% said they had seen some improvement. Only users in the Pacific Northwest were more enthusiastic about the Internet’s effect on their hobbies – 35% credited the Internet with “a lot” of improvement, while 20% saw “some” improvement. In contrast to this enthusiasm, only 16% of users in the Lower Midwest and the Upper Midwest were willing to give the Internet “a lot” of credit for improving their ability to pursue their hobbies.

The ability to maintain and improve relationships with friends and family members via email and other Internet tools is a benefit often cited by Internet users. In the Border States, users are more likely to give the Internet credit for this than their peers nationwide. About 57% of users there credit the Internet with having improved their relationships (either a lot or some) with members of their family, and 70% give the Internet the same credit with respect to relationships with their friends. Nationally, 55% of users say their relationships with family have improved a lot or somewhat; about 61% say the same thing about their relationships with friends. Clearly, users in the Border States are more enthusiastic about the Internet’s effect on their relationships, especially with their friends. In fact, users in this region are more enthusiastic about this impact than users anywhere else in the country.

When it comes to the Internet’s effect on improving their ability to shop, users in the Border States are slightly more willing to credit the Internet than their peers. While 19% give the Internet a lot of credit, only 15% of users nationally say the same thing. At the same time, 20% of users in both the Border States and nationally give the Internet some credit. The 19% of users in the region who give the Internet a lot of credit in this area are among the country’s most enthusiastic, behind only the 25% of users in the Pacific Northwest who say the same thing.

Searching for health care information online is one of the Web’s most popular activities, and the Internet has received a lot of credit for making it easier for users to find relevant information. Users in the Border States agree with this. About 38% of users here say the Internet has had some impact, either a lot or somewhat, on their ability to get health care information. Nationally, 36% of users give the Internet the same amount of credit. In the Southwest, 20% say the Internet has improved their ability “a lot,” the largest proportion of users to say so in the entire country. However, 46% of users in the region say the Internet has had no impact on their ability to get health care information, the same as the national average.

Border States users share a nationwide feeling that the Internet has had not much impact on their ability to manage their finances. About 59% of users in the region give the Internet no credit in this regard, the same proportion as users nationally. However, some users are much more enthusiastic. About 31% of users in the Border States do give the Internet credit in helping them with their finances, the largest proportion anywhere in the country. Nationally, 27% say the Internet has helped them manage their finances.

There were a few changes of note in the demographic makeup of the Border States user population, as well as in Internet usage patterns between 2000 and 2001.

In terms of demographics, there was a slight up tick in the proportion of African-American users between 2000 and 2001. Usage patterns remained the same, with a few exceptions. There was a strong increase in the proportion of users logging on at home, combined with a much smaller increase in the percentage of users using the Internet at work. At the same time, there was a significant decrease in the proportion of those who access the Web from work who log on to the Web on a typical day.

There were also some slight changes in the percentages of Border States users engaging in certain online activities. The proportion of users seeking financial information as well as those performing research online for their job fell.

Some popular Web sites in the Border States

The tables below list the top five Web sites in Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, and Phoenix in April 2003. Those sites are also the top five in the nation and they do not vary much region-by-region. In addition, the table highlights several regional sites that are in the top 25 most heavily used sites in the region during that month. A full listing of the top 25 sites in the region can be found in the spreadsheet that is available here: https://alpha.pewresearch.org/pewresearch-org/internet/releases/release.asp?id=66

The Mountain States area is one of the most highly wired regions of the country.

By 2002, the Mountain States region (Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming) had become one of the most highly wired in the entire country. Fully 64% of adults eighteen and over were Internet users. The only regions with a higher proportion of users are the Pacific Northwest, California, and New England, with 68%, 65%, and 66% of adults online respectively. At 64%, the rate of access in the Mountain States is 5 percentage points higher than the national average of 59%. This rate of access is also the result of strong growth in the size of the cohort of Internet users in the Rockies, up from 61% in 2001 and 56% of adults in 2000. Internet users in the six states of this region also share several distinctions:

• They make up one of the most experienced user populations in the country.
• The proportion of women Internet users is one of the highest in the country; the proportion of African-American users is the lowest.
• Except for email, users in the Mountain States engage in many of the Internet’s most popular activities at a lower rate than their peers nationwide.
• The Mountain States have the highest rate of home access to the Internet of any region in the country.

Mountain States Internet users are a lot like other American users, except they have slightly more experience online. The Mountain States are home to some of the nation’s most veteran users; fully 47% of those online in the Rockies have been using the Internet for three or more years. While this proportion is only slightly higher than national average of 44%, only the Capital region, California, and the Pacific Northwest have larger proportions of veteran users. Meanwhile, 32% of users in the Rockies have been online for two to three years, which is just under the national average (34%). At the same time, 20% of users in the Rockies are relatively new to the Internet: About 13% have about a year’s worth of online experience, and about 7% are Web rookies with six months or less online. Nationally, the proportions are much the same: 8% are Internet rookies, and 15% of users have been online for about 12 months.

There are fewer wealthy Internet users in the Mountain States than elsewhere in the country.

In terms of household income and education, Internet users in the Rocky Mountain States tend to mirror their peers across the nation. About 35% of users in the region possess college degrees, which is just under the national average (36%). Likewise, 32% have had some college experience, about 28% are high school graduates, and 5% have less than a high school education. These proportions are virtually the same as the national averages, which show 30% of users with some college experience, 29% with a high school diploma, and about 6% without a high school education. Of note is the relatively low proportion of college graduates; only the South (28%) and the Border States (31%) have smaller proportions of college-educated users. At 35%, the Rockies are well behind New England (41%) and the Capital Region (41%). Looked at another way, those Mountain state residents with less education (those without high school diplomas and those who have graduated from high school) are more likely to have used the Internet than similarly educated people nationwide. Almost a third (31%) of Rocky Mountain residents without a high school diploma have used the Internet, compared with 22% of such people nationally. There is also a five-percentage point gap among high school graduates.

In terms of household income, Internet users in the Mountain states tend to be concentrated in the middle brackets. In fact, the Mountain states have the smallest proportion of wealthy users (those who live in households earning more than $75,000 per year) of any region in the country. At the same time, there are also an equally modest percentage of low-income users. However, about 50% of users in the Rockies are concentrated in the middle-income brackets – 27% earn between $30,000 and $50,000 per year, and another 24% live in households earning between $50,000 and $75,000 a year. By comparison, 41% of users nationwide are found in the middle-income brackets (22% earn between thirty and fifty thousand, and 19% earn between fifty and seventy five thousand a year). The proportion of users in the Rockies living in households earning between $50,000 and $75,000 a year is the largest in the country. At the same time, 18% of users in the Mountain states earn modest incomes under $30,000 a year, just under the 19% of users nationally who earn the same amount. At the other end of the scale, only about 18% of users in the Rockies are high wage earners of $75,000 or more. This is the smallest proportion of such users in the country and is well under the percentage of similar users nationally (23%).²²

A large proportion of the users in the region are white. More Internet users in the region are female than male.

The Mountain States have one of the larger proportions of white users in the country, as well as the smallest proportion of African-American users. About 85% of users in the Rockies are white, about 7 percentage points higher than the national average of 78%. The Upper Midwest has the largest proportion of white users (93%), while California has the smallest (62%). Only 1% of users in the Mountain States are African-American, miniscule compared to the national average of 8%. Regions such as the Upper Midwest (1%), and New England (1%) have similarly tiny proportions of black users. The National Capital region (17%) has the largest proportion. Meanwhile, 9% of users in the Mountain States are Hispanic²³, equaling the national average of 9%; 5% of users are of other races and ethnicities. Hispanics in the Rocky Mountain states are also more likely to use the Internet than Hispanics across the country. Some 63% of Hispanics in the Mountain States have gone online, making them, in relative terms, the most wired ethnic group in the region. On the flip side, African-Americans in the region are less likely than the national average to use the Internet. Only about at third (33%) of African-Americans in the Rockies have gone online, compared with about 42% of African-Americans nationally.

More Internet users in the region are female than male.

The user population of the Mountain States includes more women than men. About 53% of Internet users in the region are women, the second largest proportion in the country (the leader is the Mid-Atlantic region, with 54%). Nationally, the ratio is 50-50. Women in the Rockies are also more likely to use the Web than other women across the country, as well as more likely than their male counterparts in the Mountain states. Some 62% of women are online in the Rockies, compared with 54% of women nationally. At the same time, 60% of men use the Internet in the Mountain states.

The age breakdown of Web users in the Mountain States is similar to that of the national user population.

In this region, 20% of users are between 18 and 24, 19% are between 25 and 34, about 25% are aged 35 to 44, about 19% are between 45 and 54, and 17% are over 55 (including 5% who are seniors over 65). Of note is that the proportion of young adult users between 18 and 24 in the Mountain States is among the largest in the country. While slightly larger than the national average of 17%, the proportion of such young users in the region is tied with California (20%) for the lead. Also notable is the rather large proportion (17%) of users over 55 in the Mountain States. Nationally, 14% of users are that age, but only the Pacific Northwest (18%) has a larger proportion than the Mountain States. The proportions of users in the middle age brackets in the Rockies are similar to the averages; nationally, 23% are between 25 and 34, 26% are aged 35 to 44, and 20% are between 45 and 54.

In terms of employment, about 60% of users in the Mountain States work full time and 14% have part-time jobs. Nationally, 64% of users are employed full time and 14% part time. The proportion of users with full-time jobs is among the lowest in the country, perhaps reflecting the preponderance of younger adults and seniors in the user population.

Users in the Mountain States engage in some of the Web’s most popular activities at lower rates than their peers across the country. However, users in the region are very enthusiastic about email.

Users in the Mountain States engage in some of the Web’s most popular activities at lower rates than their peers across the country.

Whether they are looking up health information, catching up on news, or buying something online, users in the Mountain States appear to engage in some of the Web’s most popular activities at a lower rate than their peers across the country.

However, users in the region are very enthusiastic about email.

Email is by far the most popular activity on the Web, and users in the Mountain States have wholeheartedly embraced it. About 91% of users there have email accounts, the largest proportion of any region in the country (the proportion for the Pacific Northwest is also 91%). Nationally, about 88% of users have sent or received email.

The act of getting the news online, while popular across the country, is not as common in the Mountain States. Only about 51% of users in the region have done this, well below the national average of 59%, and the lowest rate of any region in the country. The only region with as small a proportion of online news gatherers is the Pacific Northwest, with 53%. By comparison, 64% of users in the Border States have gotten the news on the Web.

Searching for financial information online is not among the Web’s more popular activities; only about 38% of users nationally say they have done this. In the Mountain States, this activity is also relatively unpopular. About 35% of users have sought financial information on the Web, and only the Lower Midwest (31%) has a smaller proportion of users who have done this. At the other end of the spectrum, 43% of users in the National Capital region have gone online for financial information.

Going on to the Web to look for information about health is an increasingly popular Internet activity, and about 56% of users nationally have done this. However, only 47% of users in the Mountain States have done so, easily the smallest proportion in the country. Looking at other regions, only in the Pacific Northwest have less than half (49%) of Internet users sought health information online. By comparison, 61% of users in the South use the Web to get health information.

Surfing the Internet “just for fun” is another of the Web’s more popular activities, but again it is not as prevalent in the region. While 61% of users nationally have gone online for no particular reason, only 53% of users in the Mountain States have done so. Only users in the Pacific Northwest, at 49%, are less inclined to pass time idly online. On the other hand, 70% of users in the Midwest have gone online for no particular reason.

There are a few activities that Mountain States Web users enjoy at the same rate as their peers across the country.

When it comes to buying things on the Internet, about 45% of users nationwide have done this. In the Mountain States, the proportion of users who have bought something from a Web site is exactly the same. The proportion of users using the Web to purchase things runs from a high of 55% in New England to a low of 37% in the Midwest.

Getting information from the Internet about one’s favorite hobbies is one of the Net’s most popular activities. Fully 78% of users nationally have gone online at one time or another to seek information about their hobbies, a rate equaled in the Mountain States. At the same time, this cohort of online hobbyists is exceeded only by users in California (83%), the Mid-Atlantic, and New England (both 81%).

Using the Web at work for research on the job is a fairly common activity, and about 41% of users nationally have done this. In the Mountain States, 39% of users use the Web for this purpose. Along the same lines, 74% of users in the Rockies have gone online when they needed the answer to a particular question.