“Hanging Out” Online

One third of US Internet users "hang out" online

2/16/2006 1:02:30 PM

By Nate Anderson

Did you go online yesterday just for fun? If so, you're in good company. A new survey (PDF) out from the Pew Internet & American Life Project finds that nearly one-third of all Internet users in the US regularly go online just to "pass the time."

While the Internet is still most often used with a purpose in mind, it is gradually becoming a primary recreation destination as well.

"Users have already folded purposeful Web activities into their everyday lives—communicating, gathering information or looking for answers.

Now, they have added Web surfing — going online without any particular purpose to that list. Many people have described the internet in terms of different purposeful places: a library, or a shopping mall, or post office.

Now we can add 'destination resort'—a place to go just to have fun or pass the time—to that list."

You might assume that things have always been this way, but in reality the numbers have spiked substantially in the last year alone. In November 2004, only 25 million people claimed to go online on any particular day just for fun. By the time the most recent survey was done in December 2005, that number had jumped to nearly 40 million people—and that's just in the US.

The survey also found, to no one's surprise, that young men make up the largest group of people who use the Internet simply for recreation. When broken down by gender, 34 percent of males and 26 percent of females passed time on the Web on any given day.

While the numbers are growing substantially for both genders, men are outpacing women and saw an increase of 10 percentage points in the last year. When broken down by age, the results also conform to expectations: younger Internet users more often surf without reason than their elders do, but it is worth noting that 20 percent of all American adults over the age of 65 use the Internet for fun on any given day.

The study attributes the growth in recreational Net use to two factors, the rise in broadband connections and the increase in Web content. It's not just broadband users who find themselves at homestarrunner.com, however; 63 percent of all dial-up users in the country surf for fun, too (so, while they may be wasting time, they're certainly learning patience).

The upshot of all this is that the Internet is in the midst of an evolution into a major recreational destination for Americans and a source for digital content that once was available only in the racks of your local electronics store.

Is this news another bit of evidence that we are Bowling Alone, or is the Internet providing new and different forms of community interaction?

Like most things in life, it depends on how you use it (it is interesting to note that books are never charged with destroying community, though they generally require solitude, quiet, and staring at a flat surface for long periods of time). Those who spend their online hours obsessively browsing for porn aren't doing themselves any favors, but it is unfair to suggest that online interaction is not capable of creating community in any way.

Still, if computer time is coming at the expense of face-to-face interaction with other people, it is certainly capable of causing problems. Will people remain as interested in working for the good of their physical community, for instance, when the "community" with which they most identify is only found in cyberspace?