More than half of all respondents, 56%, who said they faced a problem in the past two years identified one of three matters: health care, paying for health care and government benefits such as Social Security and military pensions. Parsing that further, the responses from Americans who have high access and low access to the internet diverge. Those with low access to the internet or no access at all are half as likely to identify some other problem in their lives, at 14%, as high-access internet users, at 30%. And they are twice as likely to simply not identify a problem at all.

Reflecting that the low-access group is more likely to be older, 54% of them report that they or someone in their household receives Social Security benefits or is covered by Medicare, compared with only 23% of the younger, high-access group. Breaking the low-access group down further, 32% of those with dial-up internet access are receiving such benefits, while 62% of those with no internet access are doing so. In terms of other types of government aid, which tends to be administered by the state or local government, 21% of the low-access Americans say they are receiving benefits, compared with 14% of those with high-access.

Aside from the self-evident differences in internet use, the low-access group approaches similar resources for addressing their matters and solving their problems as the high-access group. Only their use of television and radio is different, where 21% of the low-access group rely on TV and radio as sources of information or help, compared with 14% of the high-access group.

The low-access group is also much less likely to say that in the future they would use the internet to help them address their matters of concern.