Enter The Net

[This report is based on the findings of a daily tracking survey on Americans' use of the Internet. The results in this report are based on data from telephone interviews conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates between November 19 to December 20, 2008, among a national sample of 2,253 adults.]

source: http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Chronic-Disease/Part-1.aspx?r=1

SUMMARY OF FINDINGS

Adults living with chronic disease are disproportionately offline in an online world.

Recent survey data from the Pew Internet Project and the California HealthCare Foundation show that adults living with chronic disease are significantly less likely than healthy adults to have access to the internet:

• * 81% of adults reporting no chronic diseases go online.
• * 62% of adults living with one or more chronic disease go online.

People managing multiple diseases are less likely to have internet access:

• * 68% of adults reporting one chronic disease go online.
• * 52% of adults living with two or more chronic diseases go online.

These findings are in line with overall trends in public health and technology adoption. Statistically speaking, chronic disease is associated with being older, African American, less educated, and living in a lower-income household. By contrast, internet use is statistically associated with being younger, white, college-educated, and living in a higher-income household. Thus, it is not surprising that the chronically ill report lower rates of internet access than other adults.  However, when all of these demographic factors are controlled, living with a chronic disease in and of itself has an independent, negative effect on someone’s likelihood to have internet access.

The internet access gap creates an online health information gap.

Looking at the population as a whole, 51% of American adults living with chronic disease have looked online for any of the health topics included in the survey, such as information about a specific disease, a certain medical procedure, prescription or over-the-counter drugs, or health insurance.

By comparison, 66% of adults who report no chronic conditions use the internet to gather health information.

Lack of internet access, not lack of interest in the topic, is the primary reason for the gaps. In fact, when demographic factors are controlled, internet users living with chronic disease are slightly more likely than other internet users to access health information online.

Health professionals dominate the information mix.

More than any other group, people living with chronic disease remain strongly connected to offline sources of medical assistance and advice:

• * 93% of adults living with chronic disease ask a health professional for information or assistance in dealing with health or medical issues.
• * 60% ask a friend or family member.
• * 56% use books or other printed reference material.
• * 44% use the internet.
• * 38% contact their insurance provider.
• * 6% use another source not mentioned in the list.

By comparison, adults who report no chronic conditions are significantly more likely to turn to the internet as a source of health information and less likely to contact their insurance provider.

However, the social life of chronic disease information is robust.

Interestingly, there are two activities which stand out among people living with chronic disease: blogging and online health discussions. When other demographic factors are held constant, having a chronic disease significantly increases an internet user’s likelihood to say they work on a blog or contribute to an online discussion, a listserv, or other online group forum that helps people with personal issues or health problems.

Uptake for these activities is low overall, but those who have participated often praise the information they find. For example, one person wrote, “[An] online support group helped me learn about the disease and provided comfort in knowing that my symptoms were not ‘just in my head,’ and helped me take steps to adjust to living with a chronic condition.” Another shared, “I live in a small town and it is helpful to be able to use the internet to find others that have the same condition as I do.”

Living with chronic disease is also associated, once someone is online, with a greater likelihood to access user-generated health content such as blog posts, hospital reviews, doctor reviews, and podcasts. These resources allow an internet user to dive deeply into a health topic, using the internet as a communications tool, not simply an information vending machine.

The impact of online health information may be muted among people living with chronic disease.

Thirty-six percent of adults living with chronic disease say they or someone they know has been helped by following medical advice or health information found on the internet, which is significantly lower than the 45% of adults with no chronic disease.

Very few adults, regardless of health status, say they or someone they know has been harmed by following medical advice or health information found on the internet. Two percent of adults living with chronic disease report such harm, compared with 3% of adults with no chronic disease.

However, when asked if the health information found in their last online session had an impact on their own health care or the way they care for someone else, those who are living with chronic disease are significantly more likely than other internet users to say yes, their most recent inquiry made a difference.

The internet is like a secret weapon – if someone has access to it.

The deck is stacked against people living with chronic disease. They are disproportionately offline. They often have complicated health issues, not easily solved by the addition of even the best, most reliable, medical advice.

And yet, those who are online have a trump card. They have each other. This survey finds that having a chronic disease increases the probability that an internet user will share what they know and learn from their peers. They unearth nuggets of information. They blog. They participate in online discussions. And they just keep going.

source: http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Chronic-Disease/Part-1.aspx?r=1

As of December 2009, 38% of U.S. adults age 65 and older go online, a significantly lower rate of internet adoption than the general population (74%) and even the next-oldest group (70% of adults age 50-64 years old go online).

In addition, just 26% of U.S. adults age 65 and older have home broadband access, compared with 56% of adults age 50-64 years old (and 60% of all adults).

Older internet users are also likely to stay in the shallow end of the internet activities pool: email and search. A few pioneers have jumped into the social media deep end, but these seniors are the exception, not the rule.

And while the Pew Internet Project has found that mobile access is closing the gap between African Americans and whites, and mobile users are more likely to participate in social media, just 16% of U.S. adults age 65 and older go online wirelessly, via a laptop or handheld device. By contrast, 55% of all adults connect to the internet wirelessly.

All this could change if more older adults start carrying internet-enabled mobile devices, but for now, the majority of older adults remain offline and in the stationary media majority.

Source: http://pewinternet.org/Commentary/2010/January/38-of-adults-age-65-go-online.aspx

by Susannah Fox

Jan 13, 2010

Over the years, I have often referred to results of studies conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Research group. I am fascinated by the social and cultural impact of the internet on our lives. I guess that’s what I get for being a relatively older internet geek. I actually remember life before it existed!

Pew recently invited me to take a survey asking about my predictions for the internet and our lives over the next ten years. I had fun answering the questions and pondering the ideas that are currently being tossed around.

The survey is open for anyone who has a stake in the internet. Click the link below and use PIN 1000 to add your two cents. The survey takes around 20 minutes to complete.

http://survey.confirmit.com/wix/p1075078513.aspx

By BRAD STONE
Published: December 13, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO — It used to be that computer viruses attacked only your hard drive. Now they attack your dignity.

Malicious programs are rampaging through Web sites like Facebook and Twitter, spreading themselves by taking over people’s accounts and sending out messages to all of their friends and followers. The result is that people are inadvertently telling their co-workers and loved ones how to raise their I.Q.’s or make money instantly, or urging them to watch an awesome new video in which they star.

“I wonder what people are thinking of me right now?” said Matt Marquess, an employee at a public relations firm in San Francisco whose Twitter account was recently hijacked, showering his followers with messages that appeared to offer a $500 gift card to Victoria’s Secret.

Mr. Marquess was clueless about the offers until a professional acquaintance asked him about them via e-mail. Confused, he logged in to his account and noticed he had been promoting lingerie for five days.

“No one had said anything to me,” he said. “I thought, how long have I been Twittering about underwear?”

The humiliation sown by these attacks is just collateral damage. In most cases, the perpetrators are hoping to profit from the referral fees they get for directing people to sketchy e-commerce sites.

In other words, even the crooks are on social networks now — because millions of tightly connected potential victims are just waiting for them there.

Often the victims lose control of their accounts after clicking on a link “sent” by a friend. In other cases, the bad guys apparently scan for accounts with easily guessable passwords. (Mr. Marquess gamely concedes that his password at the time was “abc123.”)

After discovering their accounts have been seized, victims typically renounce the unauthorized messages publicly, apologizing for inadvertently bombarding their friends. These messages — one might call them Tweets of shame — convey a distinct mix of guilt, regret and embarrassment.

“I have been hacked; taking evasive maneuvers. Much apology, my friends,” wrote Rocky Barbanica, a producer for Rackspace Hosting, an Internet storage firm, in one such note.

Mr. Barbanica sent that out last month after realizing he had sent messages to 250 Twitter followers with a link and the sentence, “Are you in this picture?” If they clicked, their Twitter accounts were similarly commandeered.

“I took it personally, which I shouldn’t have, but that’s the natural feeling. It’s insulting,” he said.

Earlier malicious programs could also cause a similar measure of embarrassment if they spread themselves through a person’s e-mail address book.

But those messages, traveling from computer to computer, were more likely to be stopped by antivirus or firewall software. On the Web, such measures offer little protection. (Although they are popularly referred to as viruses or worms, the new forms of Web-based malicious programs do not technically fall into those categories, as they are not self-contained programs.)

Getting tangled up in a virus on a social network is also more painfully, and instantaneously, public. “Once it’s delivered to everyone in three seconds, the cat is out of the bag,” said Chet Wisniewski of Sophos, a Web security firm. “When people got viruses on their computers, or fell for scams at home, they were generally the only ones that knew about it and they cleaned it up themselves. It wasn’t broadcast to the whole world.”

Social networks have become prime targets of such programs’ creators for good reason, security experts say. People implicitly trust the messages they receive from friends, and are inclined to overlook the fact that, say, their cousin from Ohio is extremely unlikely to have caught them on a hidden webcam.

Sophos says that 21 percent of Web users report that they have been a target of malicious programs on social networks. Kaspersky Labs, a Russian security firm, says that on some days, one in 500 links on Twitter point to bad sites that can infect an inadequately protected computer with typical viruses that jam hard drives. Kaspersky says many more links are purely spam, frequently leading to dating sites that pay referral fees for traffic.

A worm that spread around Facebook recently featured a photo of a sparsely dressed woman and offered a link to “see more.” Adi Av, a computer developer in Ashkelon, Israel, encountered the image on the Facebook page of a friend he considered to be a reliable source of amusing Internet content.

A couple of clicks later, the image was posted on Mr. Av’s Facebook profile and sent to the “news feed” of his 350 friends.

“It’s an honest mistake,” he said. “The main embarrassment was from the possibility of other people getting into the same trouble from my profile page.”

Others confess to experiencing a more serious discomfiture.

“You feel like a total idiot,” said Jodi Chapman, who last month unwisely clicked on a Twitter message from a fellow vegan, suggesting that she take an online intelligence test.

Ms. Chapman, who sells environmentally friendly gifts with her husband, uses her Twitter account to communicate with thousands of her company’s customers. The hijacking “filled me with a sense of panic,” she said. “I was so worried that I had somehow tainted our company name by asking people to check their I.Q. scores.”

Social networking attacks do not spare the experts. Two weeks ago, Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project, a nonprofit research group, accidentally sent messages to dozens of his Twitter followers with a link and the line, “Hi, is this you? LOL.” He said a few people actually clicked.

“I’m worried that people will think I communicate this way,” Mr. Rainie said. “ ‘LOL,’ as my children would tell you, is not the style that I want to engage the world with.”

Originally printed in the New York Times. Click here for full article.