Less of the Internet: Making Sense of Non-users, Ex-users and Intermittent Users

Recent generations of information, communication and entertainment technology rely on constant Internet connectivity. Public policymakers, private sector interests and conventional wisdom agree that keeping consumers connected is a social and economic imperative. Look at advertising, scholarly work or popular media and you get the impression that everyone is online, and if they aren’t, they want to be. But recent reports on Internet usage patterns document the presence of ex-users, along with a persistent population of non-users. Not surprisingly, these groups are different in their size, composition and motivation, but together they account for up to 30 percent of the population in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia.

This presentation examines the non-user and ex-user categories, and proposes another less visible, but equally important category known as “occasionally disconnected” or intermittently connected users. Social scientists and public policy experts have described trends involving ex-users and non-users. For example, Nielsen Online reports that over 60 percent of Twitter users stopped using the site within 30 days, while Facebook and MySpace enjoy higher retention rates. But to date, few studies have explored what motivates occasionally disconnected users. This presentation draws on a synthesis of recent quantitative studies, ethnographic research and other social scientific inquiry to shed light on these key questions:

• What motivates people to become ex-users of the Internet? • Is this a growing trend? • Are ex-users a coherent population? • Are they a harbinger of things to come? • What do their rejections tell us about how to make technology more compelling?

Ethnographic research, exploring second homes as technology sites, provides clear indications that people use their vacation time to remake their relationships to new technologies. But is this behavior an explicit disconnection strategy?

Recent work focused on PCs in the home points to other explanations. In many homes around the world, household personal computers are poorly maintained and often barely functional. While malfunctioning televisions and mobile phones are usually immediately replaced, a surprising number of households limp along with sub-optimal PC experiences, limited Internet access, and, by extension, limited access to Internet-enabled experiences.

This talk uses recent findings to show how some consumer populations manage their relationships with technology through complex disconnection and connection practices and looks at the impact of ex-users, non-users and occasionally disconnected users on the future of new technologies.