Despite the astronomical popularity of the Internet in the past years, Internet usage research firm Pew Report states that one in five U.S. adults still does not use the Internet at all. The statistics come against the rapid developments and trends that have been experienced in IT domains over the past years as the Internet has become a key portal for accessing various services in the education, commercial, career, social networking, media, information processing and exchange spheres.

According to the report, some of the main factors influencing the trend include that most adults are simply not interested neither are they into the Web, YouTube, e-mail or later on, FaceBook. "Among current non-internet users, almost half (48%) say the main reason they don't go online now is because they don't think the internet is relevant to them -- often saying they don't want to use the internet and don't need to use it to get the information they want or conduct the communication they want," details the report.

The report shows that common reasons gathered in the research process include that a significant proportion of adults do not have a computer or they deem it too expensive or too difficult or worse still, "a waste of time." The report also shows that the majority of Americans that do use the Internet currently have never used it before and there is no one in the households they live in who uses the Internet.

According to the report, among non-Internet users documented in the research, 20% of those that  have not gone online indicated that they know enough about technology to go online if they wanted to while the other 10% indicated that they are interested in going online or using e-mail in the future. The details of the report attest to the trend that has been established by previous researches on Internet adoption in the U.S. among adults.  Internet usage among adults went up significantly from the mid 90s up to 2005. Post 2005, trends on Internet usage among adults show that the number of those that go online has remained stable between the range of 75 to 85%.

The majority of non-Internet users consist of 59% of the U.S seniors that do not engage in cyber activity. According to the report close to 60% of U.S. adults who did not complete high school do not go online. Poverty shows up as one of the salient factors impacting on the patterns of Internet usage. The report indicates that almost 40% of people with a yearly household income under $30000 do not use the Internet. The report further advances that people with a yearly household income under $20,000 are highly unlikely to use the Internet.

"The internet access gap closest to disappearing is that between whites and minorities. Differences in access persist, especially in terms of adults who have high-speed broadband at home, but they have become significantly less prominent over the years -- and have disappeared entirely when other demographic factors (including language proficiency) are controlled for," outlines the Pew Report. Some interesting trends included in the report show the apparent growth of mobile Internet usage even among the less literate and financially empowered, further attesting to the strides mobile technology is making in diminishing the yawning digital divide.

(reported by Gugulethu Nyoni, edited by Dave Clark)