One-Third of U.S. Logs on a Lot, But Half Doesn’t Care: Pew

According to a new survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 31% of American adults get lots of use, productivity and satisfaction out of using Internet-connected technology (computers, mobile phones, personal digital assistants), while 20% use the technology grudgingly– and almost half could care less.

The group’s new attitudinal survey, “A Typology of Information and Communication Technology Users”, used random phone interviews with Americans conducted between February 15 and April 6 to assemble a snapshot of how, and how extensively, we use the interconnection technologies available to us.

While 85% of Americans own and use either a cell phone or an Internet-enabled computer, only 8% use those assets intensively to express themselves and interact with others, the report found. About 49% either don’t use the technology or do so sparingly, due to either information overload or to an inability to master the functions of devices they own.

The high-use 31%, which the report categorizes as “elite users”, are most likely to own and use information gadgets and services. The group breaks out into four almost equal subsets, ranging from the “omnivores” who plunge into Web 2.0 activities such as creating and posting content, blogging and running their own Web pages to “lackluster veterans” who use the Internet but use their mobile phones to a lesser degree and aren’t excited about being constantly accessible.

Pew found that twenty percent of the U.S. population count as “middle of the road tech users”, evenly split into “mobile centrics” who use their cell phones to the fullest but the Web less so, and the “connected but hassled”, who own the technology but resent its intrusion on their lives.

Among the 49% “Few Tech Assets” segment, the report identifies “inexperienced experimenters” (8% of the total) who would use devices more if they had more expertise; the “light but satisfied” group (15%), getting what they want from interactive technology but not feeling a need for more; “indifferents” (11%) who own devices but don’t value the connectivity; and those “off the network” (15%) who don’t own cell phones, don’t have Internet access, and don’t really want either.

Demographically, the omnivores group came in youngest, with an average age of 28 and 10 years’ experience online. Mobile centrics were a bit older, typically 32 and on line for 9 years. Connectors, the other “elite” group, were older still at a median 38. The “few tech assets” sub-categories all skewed older, from a median age of 47 for the “indifferents” to 64 for those “off the network”.

Among the “elite user” group, women outnumbered men 52%-48%. (The survey had a 2% error margin.) But within the subcategories of that segment, they only dominated their male counterparts in the “connectors” group, where they made up 55% of respondents.

Higher incomes showed a positive correlation to higher technology use in the survey, as did higher educational levels.