81 percent of Americans use the Internet

Four out of five U.S. adults now use the Internet, according to a survey by The Harris Poll.

Harris began measuring online use in 1995, finding then that just 18 million Americans used the Internet. Now, in 2008, The Harris Poll says 184 million Americans are wired to the Web.

As a percentage of Americans, the following shows the growth over the years in online use:
1995: 9 percent
1997: 30 percent
2000: 63 percent
2004: 73 percent
2008: 81 percent

Other results of The Harris Poll include:

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

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

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

The Harris Poll® was conducted by telephone within the United States in October 2008 (October 16 and 20, 2008) and October 2008 (October 30 and November 2, 2008) among 2,020 adults (aged 18 and over).