Wired in Rockbridge
• 8 out of 10 households in the area are connected to the Internet.
• Residents spend up to 17 hours per day online—2.5 hours on average. The majority spend between 1 and 2.5 hours online daily.
• Nearly three fourths of Internet users spend most of their online time at home. Nearly half use it at work, and 20 percent at the public library or someone else’s house. And 15 percent use mobile Internet everywhere.
• 11 percent of respondents have never used the Internet, while 81 percent have used it for 5 years or more.
Making the connection
• The majority of respondents with a home connection use a desktop computer to access the Internet at home.
• More than a third of Internet households connect via DSL, and about one fourth use a cable modem. One tenth still use dial-up, which is double the national average.
• Nearly half of respondents with a home connection are not satisfied with the number of Internet providers in the area, and nearly a third expressed at least some dissatisfaction with the cost of service.
• But, 7 out of 10 with a home connection are at least somewhat satisfied with its speed and reliability.
• The biggest reasons people in the area don’t have Internet service at home are cost and not owning a computer.
Online activities
• Six in ten online residents shop online. They buy something online between one and 125 times per year, averaging 21 purchases yearly.
• The majority of Internet users search Google at least once per day and a third play games online.
• About four out of ten online residents use email only once per day or less and never use Facebook. Only 7 percent use Twitter. But one fourth do use a cell phone to access the Internet.
• About 8 in 10 Internet users never watch movies on paid websites like Netflix. They watch YouTube videos once per week or less.
• About two-thirds of local citizens get news online. The majority of those who do so turn to news websites as their main online source for news, and one fourth say Google is their main source for online news.
• E-mail is a frequent means of political communication—more so than telephone or in person. 35 percent used email to contact a government official and 19 percent to communicate with a political group in the past two years.
• Two thirds of online residents went to health information websites while only half sought advice from a friend or family member.
Other communication
• Residents frequently keep in touch with friends and family by: telephone (76 percent), e-mail (62 percent), in person (32 percent), and Facebook (24 percent).
• More than half of those who use cell phones frequently or sometimes use them to send text messages and take photos. About a fourth use e-mail and access websites on their phones at least sometimes.
• Residents named hard copy newspapers as their main source for news (one third), followed by TV news (28 percent), online news (14 percent), and a family member or friend (11 percent).
Demographics
• Participants range in age from 18 to 98. The average age of respondents is 58.
• 44 percent are men, and 56 percent are women.
• 42 percent do not have a college degree.
• The majority’s household income is under $60,000.
We mailed the survey to a random sample of 2,500 households in the Rockbridge area, which yielded 505 completed questionnaires.
