U.S., Canada Net Users Up to 79 Million, Study Finds

The number of North Americans surfing the Internet has surged to 79 million, many of them influenced by computer-savvy children in their homes, researchers said Tuesday.

A study based on information gathered in a telephone survey in June by Nielsen Media Research and the nonprofit industry association CommerceNet found that the number of Internet users over the age of 16 in the U.S. was 70.5 million and 8.5 million in Canada.

It showed an increase of 36% in the number of adult users in the U.S. and Canada compared with the 58 million users measured in a previous study in September 1997. Only 18 million people were online when Nielsen conducted its first Internet survey in 1995.

“It is more likely for an adult to be an Internet user if there are children in the house,” Jerome Samson, director of technology and business strategy at Nielsen Media Research, said in an interview. For the purposes of the survey, people ages 16 and older were considered adult.

“For a good share of active users, very often a child is the main reason why they are adopting new technology. There may be other sociological reasons or rationale but that is one obvious one,” Samson said.

He said researchers found that there were 36 million users with children at home. The largest segment of people interviewed for the study did not have children.

The survey was based on random interviews with 4,700 people ages 16 and older in the United States and Canada during the month of June.

Researchers also found that the number of online shoppers--people checking or comparing products and services advertised on Web sites--had reached 48 million.

Between September 1997 and June, the increase in the number of people having shopped online was 37%, roughly in line with the overall Internet population growth, researchers said. The number of people making purchases online doubled to 20 million. Most online shoppers and purchasers are men, the study said.

Samson said among the products commonly purchased online were computer software, books, music, flowers and airline tickets.

Samson said statistics from the survey showed that 10 million people in North America had never heard of the Internet compared with 12 million nine months earlier.

Among other highlights of the study were:

* For the first time, more than 50% of the population between the ages of 16 and 34 are Internet users--about 40 million people.

* About 43% of Internet surfers in the United States--34 million people--are women, the same as the last finding nine months ago.

* 13 million people age 50 or older are Internet users.

Full results of the research are at https://www.commerce.net/research/gideon.