Use of the Internet in places other than home or work: A PIP Data Memo
3/3/2004 | 
Memo | Paul Harwood Lee Rainie
As use of the Internet becomes more appealing and more essential to Americans, a growing number are using multiple locations to go online. And significant numbers are moving beyond the tradition places of access – home and work. The Pew Internet & American Life Project has found that 23% of adult U.S. Internet users have gone online from a place other than home or work. That is close to 30 million people. In that group of online Americans, 27% have used the Internet at school, 26% have used it at friends’ or neighbors’ homes, and 26% have used it at libraries.
On any given day more than 4 million Americans are accessing the Internet from some place other than home or work. Those who use the Internet in some place other than home or work fall into two main camps. One camp is the online Americans who seem to go online wherever they are. These users often have access at home and at work and they are anxious to have access from other places as well. Many of them are young – under the age of 30. On a typical day, more than half the people accessing the Internet from a “third place” are between ages 18-24. Nearly half of students (48%) have accessed the Internet from a “third place.” They are the anywhere, anytime users of the Internet.
In the second camp are Internet users who are relatively poor and do not have high levels of education. Many have access at work, some have access at home, and a portion of them depend on a place other than home or work for their Internet access. Those who depend on “third places” make up only 3% of the entire U.S. Internet population, but they are disproportionately likely to live in households earning less than $30,000, to live in rural areas, and to be newcomers to the online world. They often use libraries and friends’ homes as their access points. And they are fairly infrequent users of the Internet.
These findings suggest that use of the Internet has spread well beyond home and work. The importance of the Internet in the lives of professionals who travel often, students, young adults, and people with a lot of online experience has grown to the point that for many it is a technology that moves with them wherever they go and which they access whenever they feel the need. On any given day, 27% of those who use the Internet go online in at least two places.
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