Education should be a key factor in Internet adoption because the Internet is dependent on the use of computer technology. While telephone users simply had to learn how to operate a telephone and adjust to speaking to someone they couldn’t see [though this task may have been somewhat difficult given its lack of precedence], the Internet requires a certain amount of computer literacy before it as an information/communication medium can be used.

The University does offer computer classes ranging from basic literacy to how to use various Internet applications. However, the data on age shows that first exposure to computers at college comes too late to be much of an influence on Internet adoption.

Clearly early exposure to computers at school influenced later propensity to adopt computer technology. The data on first exposure to a computer at home is less clear - although at age 19 the percentage of non-users increases sharply. Earlier exposure at home does not seem as important as it does within an educational setting, and therefore that setting may be key. As discussed earlier, it is worth further study to see what type of early computer use is correlated with later propensity to use computer technology ¹⁹. Merely exposing a child to technology seems not to predispose them automatically for later comfort with computers. Using a home computer as a personal arcade or typewriter without any instructional guidance is probably not enough to give the child comfort with using computing technology as a general tool that can be adapted to various uses. In these cases the computer skills were basically limited to rote mechanics for specific procedures. However, it warrants further study to see if the type of uses computers had in childhood had any influence on expanding the child’s imagination as to what the computer might be useful for in the future.

The importance of expanding the child’s imagination towards technology can be seen by examining the influence of reading science fiction as a child.

Although not reading science fiction does not preclude one from using the Internet later, those who read the most were the most likely to use it.

Still, basic exposure to computer technology can’t be completely discounted. While the amount of video games one played did not increase the later tendency to use the Internet, those who never played them were without a basic familiarity with computer technology that put them at a disadvantage for using the Internet later.

A final influence of age, which validates the idea that early exposure is most helpful, shows the effect age had on the sample.

The data shows that those born later were more likely to use the Internet. This can easily be understood in that computing technology has only been recently affordable for home and schools within the 1980s when these students were in primary school.²⁰ Presuming for the moment that primary schools acquired computers in 1985, students born in 1974 would have had less time to use them (and have already been older) than those students born in 1978.

Unlike the telephone, which is a completely diffused and established medium, the Internet (and computers in general), is in an extremely rapid state of evolution. Any study undertaken within the past few years and into the next few in the future is going to quickly become obsolete since this type of demographic data only shows who has already adopted the Internet, not who will. Predictions can still be made, though, if one bears in mind the types of needs different people will have.

The effect of the rapid development of the Internet on this and other studies is that itforces one to contextualize the data. For instance, the Berkeley data indicates that younger people are more likely to use the Internet, but their propensity to adopt may not be as dependent on their chronological age as much as it may be dependent on the types of opportunities they would have had due to their age. In the case of gender, care should be taken when using older studies as gauges to judge the validity of more recent data. For instance, there was a study performed in 1994 which showed that women were only 10% of the Internet-using population. However, it has been documented that women on the whole first came to use the Internet in 1995 [Plotnikoff, 1996] which can explain how the numbers for the 1996 Berkeley sample came out to be much more equal. Krendl’s arguments are similarly dated. Women may have been at a disadvantage with computing under the circumstances of the mid-80s, but by the mid-90s perhaps enough circumstances have changed [i.e., computer affordability, access to computers through the University, the mere existence of the Internet as something interesting to use a computer for] that the framework underwhich women had made their decisions about adopting technology is now completely different. Rather than discredit the Berkeley data, these evolutionary changes only go to confirm the thrust of this paper, that people adopt technology when and how it suits them.

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cathyg@csua.berkeley.edu

http://www.csua.berkeley.edu/~cathyg