US Population goes from 9% online to 77% online in a decade

June 22, 2006 Harris Interactive’s latest poll of the internet population indicates the percentage of adults in the United States who are online passed the 77% mark in the first quarter of this year, up from 9% in November 1995. Full details of the poll are available here, but we just couldn’t help ourselves and had to chart the figures as they show that the internet has moved from novelty to mainstream in a decade and given the long term trend, we can expect within a short time internet access will be ubiquitous. Interestingly, the percentage of adults who use a Personal Computer has grown from 50% in 1995 to 81% in February/April of this year, indicating that whereas less than one in five PCs were connected a decade ago, almost all PCs are now connected. And the characteristics of the internet population that were evident in the beginning of being predominantly male, well educated and high income are still to be seen a decade later. One wonders just how far we’ll progress in the next decade as convergence takes hold.