Online Audience - 2006 Annual Report

While a Web site can gather all kinds of detailed information about its users, from the kind of products they buy to the time of day they log on, no clear method for tallying overall use of the World Wide Web has been firmly established. The best data still come largely from public opinion surveys, and one survey finding often contradicts another. What’s more, to understand the universe of news consumption online, one first has to define the broader universe of those who use the Internet at all.

For that universe, two survey groups — the Pew Internet and American Life Project and the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press — both put the number at about 7 out of 10 adults in 2005 using the Internet in some way. In absolute numbers , that would mean that roughly about 137 million adult Americans reported going online at the end of 2005.1

Percent of Population Ever Going Online

1995-2005

Design Your Own Chart

Source: Pew Research Center for The People and The Press, "Public More Critical of Press, But Goodwill Persists," June 26, 2005

* qu: Do you ever go online to access the Internet or World Wide Web or to send and receive email?

And the number may be higher if one includes more young people. The USC Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future, asking not just about adults but about anyone 12 or older, found that 79% of Americans had gone online in 2005, up from 76% in 2003 and 71% in 2002.2 3