In the wake of the 25th anniversary of the World Wide Web, the Pew Research Center in Washington D.C. conducted a survey revolving around the Internet. As the results show, an astounding 87 percent of adults in the U.S. use the Internet. This is a massive increase from the 42 percent of U.S. adults who had never even heard of the Internet back in 1995.
Tim Berners-Lee, a British computer scientist, is the founding father of the World Wide Web. At the age of 33, Berners-Lee presented his ideas of a mass communication tool in a paper which would later be known as the seed for developing the Internet. March 12, 2014 marks the 25th anniversary of his remarkable contribution to the world we live in today.
Ever since its creation, the World Wide Web has been on the rise. Users can shop, bank, communicate globally and even date through the internet. Through surveying more than 1,000 U.S. adults, the Pew Research Center found that 90 percent of respondents believe the Internet is good for them, with 76 percent also believing that the Internet has been good for society.
Additionally, the survey found that eight in 10 U.S. adults said they use a laptop or desktop computer somewhere in their lives, and 53 percent of Internet users today said that the Internet would be very hard to give up. This is an increase from the 38 percent who said the same back in 2006. The Pew Research Center also revealed that 49 percent of cell phone users said their phones would be very hard to give up, which is an increase from the 44 percent who were surveyed in 2006.
Interestingly enough, the survey found that U.S. adults don’t feel the same way about television. In 2006, 44 percent of respondents said it would be very hard to give up television, compared to the 35 percent who said the same in the most recent survey.
The introduction of smartphones and fast-paced development of technology may correlate with the increase in Internet users and have an impact on the beliefs of cell phone users. There is no doubt, however, that the Internet has been and will continue to be the intricate but convenient world-wide communication tool used by millions of people.
