Web Clicking With More Mainstream Americans

By JUBE SHIVER Jr

Jan. 15, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

WASHINGTON —

Drawn by easier access and burgeoning opportunities for shopping and entertainment, a flood of mainstream Americans have become Internet users in the last year, with women leading the way, according to a new study.

And these new users are more interested in utilitarian personal services such as weather reports and shopping than politics, news or random Web surfing--a shift in tastes that experts say could transform the nature of the Internet.

The survey released Thursday by the Washington-based Pew Research Center is the latest evidence that a fast-growing and more diverse online audience--now estimated at 41% of all American adults--is turning the Internet into a broad-based medium to be reckoned with.

The newest Internet users are less educated and wealthy than longer-term users, bringing the once-elite Internet community more in line with the general population, said the Pew Center, an independent polling group that studies attitudes toward press, politics and public policy. The survey also showed that nearly half of the estimated 74 million Americans now using the Internet have been online for a year or less.

Experts say the rising number of women online fueled this winter’s multibillion-dollar Christmas buying spree. Women made as much as 60% of all online purchases this holiday season, according to data released Thursday by Internet measurement company Media Metrix.

Similarly, e-mail--once confined mainly to office workers--has been embraced by Americans of all stripes: 35% of the adults surveyed told the Pew Research Center that they use e-mail.

“I was struck by the velocity of change taking place on the Internet,” said Rep. Michael G. Oxley (R-Ohio) a proponent of high-technology who is vice chairman of the House subcommittee on telecommunications. “As the costs of going online go down,” Oxley said, the Internet audience is growing “more socially diverse.”

Experts attribute the cyberspace shift to the increased accessibility of Internet technology. Americans can now use everything from specialized telephones to TV sets to connect to the Internet. In addition, companies have used their understanding of consumer shopping habits to design better Web pages.

But some experts caution that huge shopping categories now dominated by women, such as food and apparel, may never make a dent in cyberspace since online shoppers can’t try on clothes or handle produce before making a purchase.

Besides the shopping boom, the study suggests that the broadening of the Internet audience will lead to a proliferation of more general interest Web sites at the expense of specialized sites about politics, science or technology. Newer users of the global computer network are more preoccupied with universal subjects such as the weather, which is now the most popular online draw, according to the Pew study.

“We have a great deal of evidence that randomly surfing the Web for content is pretty much gone,” said Mark Stalhman, president of New Media Associates, a New York consulting firm. “People who come to the Web now . . . want more convenience.”

The changes are a sharp reversal from two years ago when the research center last undertook a major examination of the worldwide computer network, said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew poll. Back then, the online audience was a computer-savvy group that was typically well-educated, affluent and overwhelmingly male.

The 82-page Pew study was based on a nationwide telephone survey of 3,184 adults conducted in November. The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The survey found 41% of the nation’s adults use the Internet, up from 23% in 1996. Weather is the most popular online draw--64% of all users, followed by news about technology (59%), entertainment (58%) and business (58%). That stands in contrast to 1996, when weather and politics ranked at the bottom of online interests.

Forty-six percent of the nation’s 74 million Internet users came online in the last 12 months. And women overtook men among Internet newcomers, making up 52% of those who went online for the first time in the last year compared with the 48% male first-timers.

But the study confirmed that Internet users remain younger, more educated and more well-heeled than the average American. It found 80% of those online are under age 50, compared with 63% of all Americans.

As cyberspace grows more diverse, sending and receiving e-mail--long the most popular online activity--is being challenged by other activities, among them, shopping. Thirty-two percent of Internet users had made an online purchase, even before the Christmas shopping rush was completed. In 1995, just 8% had purchased goods online.

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Democratization of the Internet

As the Internet becomes more popular, it is becoming more mainstream. Comparisons of new users with longer-time ones:

Total Internet use:

Started using the Net more than a year ago: 53%

Started using the Net in the last year: 46%

Internet users who:

Are male:

Started using the Net more than a year ago: 55%

Started using the Net in the last year: 48% Are female:

Started using the Net more than a year ago: 45%

Started using the Net in the last year: 52%