Digital Divide Issues
The internet population looks increasingly like the overall population in the United States, but there are notable exceptions; income and age determine who is online. Fully 82% of those in households with incomes of at least $75,000 are online, compared with only 38% of households with incomes less than $30,000. Those in the lower economic range, however, are getting online quickly.
Pew studies reported that half of adults (age 18 years or over) in the United States are not online (49% of men and 54% of women). This corresponds to lower socioeconomic and educational levels, and age plays a factor as well:
Part of the reason more women do not have Internet access is that women make up a large proportion of the elderly in the United States and that is also the group most likely to be outside the Internet population. Thus, 55% of those not online for any reason are women, and 45% are men.
Race and ethnicity are also factors both in terms of access to the internet itself and in terms of internet use itself.