Has the Web Become Humdrum?

Lisa Cobb hadn't used the Internet much when she got a job in February 2000 that gave her a high-speed connection at her office. She was pleasantly surprised by what she found on the vast global network of computers, and how Internet access quickly changed her life for the better.

"It was an absolute shock what was out there. I had no idea of what the Internet was all about or how it could be used," says Cobb, who is 29 and a program officer in the Johns Hopkins University Center for Communication Programs, where she manages reproductive health programs in the developing world. "The access to information was incredible."

While Cobb's revelation isn't news to the technologically savvy, the ongoing phenomenon of U.S. Internet growth suggests that droves of people nationwide continue to have the same experience after going online. Two major, recent studies underscore the significance of U.S. Internet growth, which remains a catalyst spurring people to go out and buy PCs. Besides keeping PC makers in business, Net users like Cobb are also the audience that electronic-commerce sites are aiming for--people who become less inclined to set foot in a brick-and-mortar store or bank.

"I use it in every facet of my life," Cobb says of the Internet. She shops for clothes, books, music, and airline tickets online. She handles her banking and pays bills online, a process that has made her much more adept at managing her money because she always knows exactly how much she has in her account. She reads news Web sites avidly, mostly to find out what's happening in the countries where the program she works for has field offices. She sends e-mail for work "all the time" and otherwise relies on Net access to do her job well, searching out obscure medical reports in addition to well-known medical sites and journals online.

In a Routine

Every day, others in the United States are also getting hooked on the Net. "A Nation Online: How Americans Are Expanding Their Use of the Internet" is based on the September 2001 U.S. Census Bureau's Current Population Survey. It was put together by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the Economics and Statistics Administration, drawing on responses from some 57,000 households and more than 137,000 individuals. It finds the growth rate of U.S. Internet use is now 2 million new users monthly. Both that report and "Getting Serious Online" from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, which is tracking 1501 Internet users, say that more than half of the U.S. population now has Internet access.

More important for policymakers, service providers, and others in the industry, the studies confirm that Internet use for many U.S. residents has become a "quotidian task," as the Pew report notes--that is, it's as important in their daily lives as the capability to pick up the telephone, and it's indispensable for research, communication, banking, and shopping.

"The status of the Internet is shifting from being the dazzling new thing to being a purposeful tool that Americans use to help them with some of life's important tasks," the Pew study says. "As Internet users gain experience online, they increasingly turn to the Internet to perform work-related tasks, to make purchases and do other financial transactions, to write e-mails with weighty and urgent content, and to seek information that is important to their everyday lives."

Some of the dazzle wore off between March 2000 and March 2001, the Pew study finds, and that translates into users spending an average of 83 minutes per session online instead of 90 minutes. There also was a decrease in the number of users who rate e-mail as "very useful" or "somewhat useful" for communicating with family, from 88 percent who gave those ratings in March 2000 to 79 percent a year later, with the decline mostly attributed to those who no longer consider e-mail "very useful" for communicating with family.

That drop indicates that Net users have undergone "a maturation process" so that the "wow" technology has now become more ingrained in daily life, and it reflects the larger number of those who have been online more than three years as of March 2000, or the so-called long-wired, who tend to rate e-mail as less useful the longer they are online.

And the dazzle has not yet arrived for many U.S. residents. The NTIA study finds people with disabilities and those with low incomes are less likely to have Internet access, particularly at home. That finding also holds for work access, a key indicator of whether a person will be online at home as well. But the study concludes that "over time Internet use has become more equitable." Public access has helped spur the change, with most use outside of homes coming at schools, although more libraries also are providing access.

Safe Surfing and Spam

Children are a particularly active group of Internet users. While that raises concerns about their exposure to unsafe or inappropriate content, the NTIA study finds those issues are not keeping households from subscribing to Internet services.

Those fears "never" bothered Rick Cross, a self-employed truck broker in Auburn, Washington, whose daughter Seran, now 23, starting using the Internet for research when in high school. If Seran saw something that seemed inappropriate for her or that "looked dirty," she would either call his attention to it or just exit the offensive Web site, he says.

While he noted that's not going to be the case with all kids, Cross, 53, says he knew his daughter simply wasn't interested in the types of sites that would cause concern.

He's also not worried about confidentiality or privacy issues online or about having his personal information stolen.

"If the bad guys want your information, they're going to get it," he says. Cross doesn't approach the Internet as being a highly secure place anyway, but figures his credit-card number is more likely to be stolen and misused when he's using it at a physical store. He just employs common sense when it comes to giving out personal information online.

More vexing is the issue of spam, or unsolicited e-mail, particularly advertising for pornography sites.

"You can get overloaded with junk," says Michael J. Petralia, a 64-year-old American Airlines flight attendant who lives in East Islip, New York. Petralia has set up spam filters and has learned to recognize e-mail that should be deleted straightaway.

Habits Change

The study finds that whatever hassles spam presents, the advantages of the Internet far outweigh the disadvantages. Like Cobb, with her need to keep up with news in nations outside of the United States, Ed Burke, 54, of Riverhead, New York, the only employee of a Washington state lumber mill who lives outside that state, uses the Internet to stay current with work issues.

"Since my industry is currently in the midst of a trade war with Canada over reimposing a punishing duty on Canadian lumber, I can read the Vancouver (B.C.) Sun and learn about the Canadian view of the topic," he writes in an e-mail response to interview questions about his Internet use.

Burke started using the Internet in 1994 and has found it a good way to learn more about his personal interests. A lot of data and services from government agencies "are accessible, understandable, and instantly available, free," he writes.

"For example, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Forest Service Division has a Forest Products laboratory. This Web site offers information for me as a professional lumberman, but also how to clean and finish my deck as a homeowner, or what to do about peeling paint, or a thousand other topics on wood and its uses. Because this is from a government source, they're not trying to sell me anything and the credentials of the 'experts' are available, so I'm not hearing some pseudo expert ... but a true professional in his field."

Long-time Internet users tend to spend less time watching TV, the research finds. That's true for Petralia, but not necessarily because he's whiling away the time he would have spent in front of the TV in front of the PC. Instead, he uses the Web to ferret out information about TV shows he thinks he might want to watch. Often, he reads about a show online and decides he'd rather not watch it.

His attitude toward the Internet likely sums up the way a lot of other steadfast users view being online: "To me, it's the Yellow Pages for the world."