GVU's Seventh WWW User Survey Use Graphs

Use of Communication Technologies

Notes:

With the purpose of gaining a better understanding of how Web users utilize other communications technologies, we asked users to report their use of these other technologies. As with the Sixth Survey, just about all (98.36% Seventh vs. 98.21%Sixth) of Web users have and use email. This is the roughly the same utilization as the phone (96.31% Seventh vs. 97.24% Sixth), which demonstrates an amazing acceptance/internalization of this new communications medium by the user community. Even more startling is that only three out of four people (71.19%) report using traditional mail (read: email has surpassed the use of traditional postal mail amongst Web users!). Email is truly the killer application of the 90's and the Internet. It is interesting to note that these percentages are nearly exactly the same as reported Sixth and Fifth Surveys.

As far as for other communications technologies, Web users are technically savvy, with 67.02%% using faxes, 59.15% using voice mail, close to half using wireless phones (45.79%), and 31.27% using pagers. Europeans are less likely to use pager, wireless, next day mail, postal mail, and voice mail than their US counterparts. Use of communications technologies is quite similar across gender however. As one might expect, the 26-50 generation is the heaviest users of technology, with the 19-25 yr. olds being the least heavy users (though this is not true for pagers).

Table of Data for All Categories

Use of Communication Technologies	All	Male	Female	USA	Europe	19-25	26-50	50+
Don t Know	22.00 0.13%	14.00 0.13%	8.00 0.16%	17.00 0.13%	2.00 0.19%	3.00 0.10%	12.00 0.12%	1.00 0.05%
Email	16036.00 98.36%	10785.00 98.53%	5027.00 98.09%	12689.00 98.49%	1056.00 98.32%	2932.00 98.49%	9601.00 98.55%	2051.00 98.42%
Fax	10926.00 67.02%	7444.00 68.01%	3336.00 65.09%	8581.00 66.60%	721.00 67.13%	1552.00 52.13%	7134.00 73.23%	1480.00 71.02%
Next Day Mail	6713.00 41.18%	4449.00 40.64%	2160.00 42.15%	5640.00 43.78%	288.00 26.82%	941.00 31.61%	4333.00 44.48%	904.00 43.38%
Other	2024.00 12.41%	1430.00 13.06%	554.00 10.81%	1601.00 12.43%	134.00 12.48%	425.00 14.28%	1095.00 11.24%	173.00 8.30%
Pagers	5098.00 31.27%	3468.00 31.68%	1558.00 30.40%	4470.00 34.69%	155.00 14.43%	1008.00 33.86%	3174.00 32.58%	473.00 22.70%
Phone	15701.00 96.31%	10607.00 96.90%	4876.00 95.14%	12453.00 96.65%	1016.00 94.60%	2853.00 95.83%	9416.00 96.65%	2015.00 96.69%
Snail Mail	11606.00 71.19%	7829.00 71.52%	3635.00 70.93%	9511.00 73.82%	581.00 54.10%	1898.00 63.76%	7154.00 73.43%	1659.00 79.61%
Voice Mail	9643.00 59.15%	6385.00 58.33%	3133.00 61.13%	8286.00 64.31%	262.00 24.39%	1675.00 56.26%	6276.00 64.42%	1017.00 48.80%
Wireless Phone	7465.00 45.79%	4933.00 45.07%	2427.00 47.36%	5980.00 46.41%	440.00 40.97%	1203.00 40.41%	4628.00 47.51%	914.00 43.86%

For more information or to submit comments:
send e-mail to www-survey@cc.gatech.edu.
GVU's WWW Surveying Team
Graphics, Visualization, & Usability Center
College of Computing
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, GA 30332-0280