Internet Penetration Flattens Out.

Regular use of the Internet by U.S. adults has flattened out at 63% of the population, and further penetration will require the conversion of “Unconnected” consumers and Internet “Resistors,” according to a new analysis from Mediamark Research Inc. (MRI).

Even though 79.5% of adults have access to the Internet at home, work or other location, data from 26,000 in-home interviews conducted each year by MRI show that just 63% of adults have used an online service or the Internet in the last 30 days. And while the Internet-using population continues to increase, MRI data from an eight-year period show that growth has slowed from a sprint to a crawl.

“Unlike a phone-recruited sample, data derived from MRI’s area (geographic) probability sample are not inherently skewed toward Internet-wired households,” said Andy Arthur, VP of Client Services at MRI. “Suggesting a long-term plateau in growth, our data show there is an entrenched group of non-connected adults and a diehard group of resistors that promise to hold out for the foreseeable future.”

A Flattening Trend

MRI releases data to its clients twice yearly, in the spring and fall. Beginning in 1995, when MRI added Internet-usage questions to its in-home surveys, four distinct periods emerge in past-30-day usage:

· Spring 1996 to Fall 1997 MRI release, typified by 2-3% increases in each six-month survey wave.

· Fall 1997 to Spring 2000, with increases of 4-7% per wave.

· Spring 2000 to Spring 2002, with 2-3% increases.

· Spring 2002 to the present, with increases below 2%.

In the 12-month period ending in April 2004, Internet and online users increased by just 1.7% of the adult population over the same period a year earlier; this compares to an 11.3% increase between 1999 and 2000. “These and related MRI data indicate that claims of the continued explosive growth of the Internet are grossly exaggerated,” said Arthur.

Each of the periods described above was marked by significant changes in the composition of the Internet-using population. At the beginning of the first period, Internet users were disproportionately young (mean age 37.3 versus an adult mean age of 44.2) and male (58.0%). They were well-educated (49.8% college grads, compared to 20.7% of the general adult population) and upper-income (67.7% with household income of $50,000 or more versus 35.2% of the general population).

Within the second period, the most pronounced compositional change was that women closed the gap with men, accounting for 50.9% of Internet users by the spring of 2000. “The youngest, most affluent and best-educated segments continued to lead overall growth, but usage increased measurably among all segments of the population,” said Arthur.

Beginning with the Spring 2002 MRI release, growth among the highest-usage groups (the young, up-market segments) appears to have reached a saturation point—with usage levels of those aged 18-24, those with household incomes of $150,000 or more and those with post-graduate degrees all having gone flat.

Two Groups of Non-Users

What does this leveling off suggest for the future? Among Internet non-users (those who have used neither the Internet nor an online service in the last 30 days) there are two functionally distinct groups. The first consists of Internet “Resistors,” who currently represent 16.5% of all U.S. adults. Resistors, who have access to the Internet but do not use it, have stubbornly represented 20% of all adults with Internet access since MRI began measuring access to the medium.

The second group is the “Unconnected,” those with no access anywhere. Traditionally, it has been conversion of the unconnected that has fueled the growth of the Internet-using population. The unconnected have, of course, shrunk during the expansion of Internet connectivity; they are now only 20.4% of the adult population. However, the unconnected population appears to be stabilizing: the percentage of unconnected adults has decreased only 1.9% since MRI’s Fall 2002 study. In contrast, between the 2001 Spring study and the 2002 Fall study, the percentage of unconnected adults declined by a much larger 11.5%.

The Future of the Internet

“The nature of these Internet holdouts means that future Internet growth, if it materializes, will probably be driven by those who are lower-income, older and more ethnically diverse,” said Arthur. “While the median age for the general adult population is 43.9, resistors have a median age of 51.5, and the unconnected, 55.3.”

The relatively younger resistors’ median individual income of $23,934 exceeds the $19,571 of the unconnected (compared to an adult population average of $33,144). The unconnected are also 72% more likely than Internet users as a whole to be African-American, and 148% more likely to be Hispanic. Moreover, people who speak mostly or only Spanish at home have been particularly slow to embrace the Internet; 14.6% of the unconnected speak mostly or only Spanish at home, compared to 6.1% of Internet resistors and a mere 2.4% of Internet users.

“So as a medium for reaching U.S. adults on a regular basis, the Internet may well be at saturation, with just under two-thirds of the population genuinely on-line,” said Arthur. “Internet resistors remain a stubborn, stable group of holdouts, while the unconnected (the group from which new users have traditionally been drawn) have become increasingly difficult to convert for reasons related to age, language and disposable income. Substantial growth in the Internet-using population is unlikely to resume without cheaper Internet connections, more Spanish-language Internet provider services and, perhaps most important, compelling new reasons for non-users to switch sides.”

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