U.S. Broadband Penetration Unchanged at 84% of Internet Households

Internet use in the United States seems to have remained flat at 82 percent of Americans, the  Center for the Digital Future at USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism reports. Also, broadband penetration remains at 84 percent of U.S. homes who use Internet access services.

The expense of using the Internet is cited as a reason for not going online by seven percent of respondents to the latest Center for Digital Future study.

Internet use dipped slightly to an average of 18.3 hours per week, the first time the weekly use has declined, but for the first time, home use of the Internet has passed 12 hours per week

The largest percentages of users reported going on the Internet at least weekly (several times a day, daily, or weekly) to browse the Web (79 percent), use online banking (47 percent), get product information (46 percent), visit social networking and video-sharing sites (46 percent), play games (39 percent), download or watch videos (39 percent), download or listen to music (38 percent), listen to online radio (22 percent), and pay bills (22 percent). Study of Internet behavior

A large majority of respondents report more than one computer in their home; the households with three or more computers (17 percent) and four or more computers (15 percent) reached an all-time high.
 
In seven years, the percentage of computer owners who have a laptop has increased from 18 percent to nearly 75 percent of users.

The number of hours that Internet users report they are online at work remained unchanged from the previous study, at 12.9 hours per week. But Internet users continue to report increasing active use of the Internet at work.  For the third year in a row, the hours that users said they are actively using the Internet at work has increased to 9.2 hours per week, a new high for the Digital Future Project.