Pew Study Finds Americans Believe The Internet Makes Them Smarter

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

The majority of American Internet users feel better informed when it comes to knowing what products and services to buy, as well as both national and international news and popular culture.

According to Kristen Purcell and Lee Rainie of the Pew Research Internet Project, 87 percent of the 1,066 adult Internet users participating in the study said that access to the online world and cell phones have improved their ability to learn new things. Of those, 53 percent said that the Internet and mobile devices had strengthened this area of their lives “a lot.”

“The vast majority of Americans believe their use of the web helps them learn new things, stay better informed on topics that matter to them, and increases their capacity to share ideas and creations with others,” Purcell and Rainie explained. “These generally positive attitudes are buttressed by the view that people like having so much information at their fingertips, rather than feeling information overload. Moreover, this positive judgment extends to the broader culture. Most believe that average Americans and US students are better informed than in the past.

People under the age of 50, those living in higher-income households and those who have attained higher levels of education are the most likely to report that the Internet and cell phones have been especially helpful when it comes to learning new things, the report found. Seventy-two percent said that they liked having massive amounts of information at their fingertips, while only 26 percent said that they felt overwhelmed by the amount of content.

When asked about specific types of information, 81 percent of those who responded said that the Web and cell phones had made them more knowledgeable about products and services than they were five years ago, while 75 percent felt that way about national news, 74 percent about global news and 72 percent about pop culture.

Furthermore, more than two-thirds of them said they knew more than their friends than they did five years ago thanks to these technological tools, and 60 percent felt likewise about their family members. However, only 49 percent said that they felt better informed about civic and government activities in their community thanks to Internet and mobile devices, and just 39 percent felt better informed about their neighbors and their neighborhood.

Nearly three-fourths of Internet users said that digital technologies had improved their ability to share their ideas and creations with others, an increase from 55 percent since 2006. Purcell and Rainie said that one of the primary reasons for this increase in the rise of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Such websites were not widely used eight years ago, but are currently used by more than two-thirds of all Internet users, according to Pew.

“Overall, internet users believe that both the average American and the average student today are better informed thanks to the internet,” the Pew representatives said. Seventy-six percent of adults said that the Internet had made the average US resident better informed, while just eight percent said it had made them less knowledgeable. Seventy-seven percent felt it made modern-day students better informed, while eight percent again believed the opposite was true.

“Perhaps surprisingly in both cases, internet users under age 30 are less likely to believe the internet is making average Americans or today’s students better informed,” Purcell and Rainie added. “Instead, they are more likely than their older counterparts to say the internet has had no real impact – 19 percent of young adults say so, compared with 9 percent of those ages 30 and older.”

—–

Follow redOrbit on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest.

redOrbit.com
offers Science, Space, Technology, Health news, videos, images and
reference information. For the latest science news, space news,
technology news, health news visit redOrbit.com frequently. Learn
something new every day.”