The results of a new poll conducted by a leading advertising agency finds that U.S. adults are increasingly obsessed with online activities, with the majority saying they can’t go for a week without going online.
Conducted by the advertising firm JWT (you can visit their awful Web site, but don’t say we didn’t warn you!), the poll asked 1,011 U.S. adults how long they would feel “OK” without going on the Web. Some 15 percent said they could last a day or less, 21 percent felt they could last a couple days, and 19 percent thought they could last a little longer, and 18 percent thought they could hold out for a week or more. Interestingly, age didn’t seem to play a major factor in the results: 44 of adults under 35 said they live part of their lives online, while 43 percent of adults 55 and over said the same thing. Nearly half—48 percent—of respondents felt they would be missing something important without Internet access.
The more titillating numbers from the poll are that 20 percent of the survey’s respondents admitted they spent less time having sex as a result of their Internet use. Another 28 percent admitted they spend less time with their friends because of the time they spend online or fiddling with them, um, gadgets.
JWT is coining a new term for folks whose lives are caught up in technology to this degree: “digitivity denizens.” The firm also notes that mobility is emerging as a key factor in how technology integrates into peoples’ lives: while the Internet was cited as the most important must-have technology, cell phones ranked higher than televisions as a device people couldn’t do without.
