Lack of Interest Top Reason 33 Million Households Don't Use Internet at Home, Says NTIA
About 33 million U.S. households, or more than a quarter of them, didn't use the Internet at home last year, with 26 million households, or a fifth all households, offline entirely, meaning no member used the Internet from any location,…
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said NTIA in a Wednesday blog post based on the July 2015 Computer and Internet Use Supplement to the Current Population Survey. Fifty-five percent of households -- up 8 percentage points from 2013 -- said they didn't use the internet at home because "they did not need it or had no interest in going online," wrote Maureen Lewis, director of NTIA minority telecommunications development. About 25 percent, down 4 percentage points from 2013, said internet service cost too much, and 7 percent, down 6 percentage points from two years ago, said they didn't have a functional computer, she said. Since 2001 when NTIA first started collecting such data, those have been the top reasons households don't use the internet at home, she said. Reducing cost could help narrow the digital divide, she said, but "overcoming the perception that home Internet access lacks relevance in households that have never used it could, however, prove to be a more difficult challenge." As NTIA had previously reported, non-Asian minorities, people with disabilities, lower-income and those with lower levels of educational attainment typically don't use the internet at home. Lewis noted the administration has a goal of connecting 20 million more Americans to high-speed internet service by 2020 (see 1603090082 and 1608310068).