ZDNet UK - News - Online growth plateaus. It looks like the Internet growth has slowed down from its gargantuan proportions. The new Pew Internet and American Life study reports that the growth has plateaued at around 2/3 of the population. The study also focused on how people use the Internet. This is both interesting and important. Pew Internet were among the first to consider that the how of Internet use is important to understanding the impact of said use. The latest report shows that the patterns of use have not changed, but the variety of services used have steadily increased in popularity. I am curious how this landscape is going to change in the next 3-5 years, when the current "net generation" of college kids starts graduating college and joining the workforce.
The Pew organization does an amazing job of tracking Internet use. I only wonder if it would be possible to convince them to do another set of longitudinal data collections as they did with one of their studies in 2000 & 2001. Longitudinal studies done by Pew would give provide unique detailed data on changes in Internet use and other behavior over time, allowing scientists to test causal hypotheses of the impact of Internet use on outcomes of interest. So how would one convince Pew to put down the buck into such an enterprise? Longitudinal studies take a lot of time, effort and expense...
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