
Almost one-fifth of Britons 'do not use internet' - rwmj
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-49607061
======
rwmj
I posted this because I think we tend to live in a bubble where everyone
carries multiple internet connected devices on their person at all times (only
a slight exaggeration!). But there are over 11 million people in a first world
country who don't use the internet at all, and likely many more who have
access but it's limited to eg only an old desktop PC or only at work. How
should internet-based start-ups react to this?

~~~
new2628
By leaving those people alone to continue living their lives as they like?

~~~
8ytecoder
If it’s by choice, sure. A lot of people either can’t afford it or there’s no
Connectivity where they live

~~~
tialaramex
96% of UK premises could have "Superfast", not just "Internet" but "Superfast"
broadband, which is defined as 30Mbps to the door. But you're correct that a
very large fraction of the population don't choose to buy this either because
they can't afford it or they don't want it.

There is a Universal Service Obligation, just like in the days of voice
telephony, which says the incumbent (British Telecom in most of the country)
is legally obliged to offer anybody who wants it at least a minimum service
(10Mbps down 1Mbps up asymmetric, so mediocre DSL basically) for a fee. In
unusual cases (imagine you live on an otherwise uninhabited island for some
reason or up a mountain) you may need to contribute to capital costs for
installation.

About 2% of the country are estimated to /live/ in places that can't get USO
obligatory service (without new construction) if they asked. Unsurprisingly
people who want fast Internet don't tend to buy properties with problems like
that, but in principle if you were stubborn you could buy one and demand they
fix it to 10Mbps up 1Mbps down.

So, whatever it is the problem is not Connectivity.

~~~
DanBC
Isn't that USO voluntary?

> In unusual cases (imagine you live on an otherwise uninhabited island for
> some reason or up a mountain) you may need to contribute to capital costs
> for installation.

I agree with you, but this bit doesn't really describe how many people need to
pay for broadband infrastructure installation.

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/askjack/2018/may/31/h...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/askjack/2018/may/31/how-
can-i-get-faster-broadband-in-a-rural-area-bt)

~~~
tialaramex
The USO is mandatory but isn't funded yet. So, right now the regulator would
struggle to rationalise say, fining the operator for not meeting it when they
aren't given any money or any means to raise revenue to provide it. But in
principle if you can imagine the British government ever doing anything again
except arguing about Brexit they might get around to it. Don't hold your
breath.

------
dazc
A lot of public services and utilities have shifted their customer facing
operations to the web and the very people who struggle to interact with these
services are often the ones who need them the most.

Factor in that a lot of these web-based services are poorly designed and badly
constructed and it is no wonder that some people get frustrated or are easily
swindled.

Local council sites tend to be the worst, in my experience, with unfathomable
navigation and broken forms being the most common problems.

My dad often asks 'why can't I do x?' and my usual answer is that the website
is sh1t, there is nothing you can do about it.

~~~
petepete
A __lot __of work goes into making GOV.UK sites accessible to people who aren
't au fait with technology. From the design of form elements and wizards to
the extreme care in choosing the correct language.

It's a huge project and driven by user research and testing. Best part, almost
all of it happens in the open

[https://design-system.service.gov.uk](https://design-system.service.gov.uk)

[https://design-system.service.gov.uk/community/backlog](https://design-
system.service.gov.uk/community/backlog)

The technology and design should eventually filter down to localised services.

~~~
kingkongjaffa
Lmao the local councils have been left to run their own web services and they
are painfully backwards and outdated, payment portals for council tax from the
early 2000’s, sites that are not responsive by default, dead/missing links.

From what I have seen they are left to do their own thing a little too much.

~~~
petepete
Yeah, we can lead the horse to water.

A dev can get a Node or Rails app with all the correct assets and templates
running in two minutes. C# and Django in a bit longer.

Most of the things they'll need to build are already there, well-engineered
and tested.

Some councils have longstanding contracts with local companies or just have
their heads in the sand. Not much more we can do.

Some work on this has actually been started

[https://localdigital.gov.uk/funding/leeds-city-
council-2/](https://localdigital.gov.uk/funding/leeds-city-council-2/)

Edit: just read the assessor's comments, pretty damning. Doesn't sound like
the project delivered much - pretty sure I could do more in an afternoon

------
cookie_monsta
There's scope for pretty massive sampling errors with any door to door survey
like this - you only end up polling people who are home (presumably during the
day), that answer their door to strangers (and not screen via camera) and are
willing to answer a whole bunch of questions.

That may be representative of the wider society, but amongst my acquaintances
it is not.

~~~
aclimatt
I don't believe they're going door to door and knocking on random doors. It's
not said explicitly but it's implied that they're sending postal mail and
following up with people who respond for in-home interviews.

The methodology is outlined here:

[https://oxis.oii.ox.ac.uk/research/methodology/](https://oxis.oii.ox.ac.uk/research/methodology/)

~~~
randogogogo
"They're sending postal mail and following up with people who respond"

If so then even worse. They'd only be working with people that take snail mail
seriously.

~~~
nurettin
Every important document ever in my life arrived via "snail mail" so I can't
really imagine anyone not taking it seriously. Except maybe some odd internet
whiz-kid with a propeller hat.

~~~
randogogogo
That's the rub I think. Would this be an "important document" in everyone's
opinion? For me it wouldn't, it'd go straight in the bin.

------
botto
I would suggest reading the original report. [https://oxis.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp-
content/uploads/sites/43/2019/0...](https://oxis.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp-
content/uploads/sites/43/2019/09/OxIS-report-2019-final-digital-PDFA.pdf)

Quite interesting to see that the majority of people who don't want to join
the internet is because of choice and worry that they will lose their privacy.

Anyone done a study of how people who don't use the internet usually vote in
elections and generally feel socially about the rest of the world?

~~~
Catsandkites
Statistically, the older you are in the UK the more conservative you are. It's
something like 17% 18-28 but 75% 60-70.

The privacy worries are weird. In my experience this is the same group that
love to use loyalty/reward cards, coupons etc. To me, those are far more
intrusive to my privacy than a properly set up internet connection.

~~~
botto
So probably the privacy concerns come from over blown news articles and
reporting about latest passwords leak, information leak, hacking, exploit and
any other word that remotely sounds like it's related to the internet.

You should watch Sky News sometimes talk about the latest security problem,
they do not take a balanced approach to the reporting.

------
qznc
One aspect is that they describe themselves as not using the internet. There
might be some Grandma who says that while writing a text message to her
family. Does the survey make clear what "using the internet" means?

~~~
reaperducer
_Does the survey make clear what "using the internet" means?_

It doesn't state explicitly, but it does not appear that text messaging, or
anything you could do with a feature phone was counted. The term used in the
study was "online," not "using the internet."

The study looked at things like "buy products," "pay bills," "listen to
music," "watch movies," "follow celebrities," "post videos," and "buy
groceries."

------
diego_moita
Honest question: is it really worth it to try to change them?

For people older than 60 years the internet is still so new that many still
might think it is a "fad". It will be very, very hard to teach new tricks to
old dogs. As the article says:

> "There are a lot of things about the internet that get less useful as you
> get older," he said.

OTOH, for people younger than 20, the proportion of not connected will most
certainly be very low. As the article says:

> "Virtually everyone is online before age 50," Dr Blank told the BBC

I suspect that the effort to get the last and very reluctant old people online
is just not worth it.

~~~
Ericson2314
But also

> Earlier versions of the survey found the 50-plus drop-off in net use had
> persisted for a long time, said Dr Blank, suggesting it was not tied to a
> particular age group that grew up without the net.

Given that the different survey results didn't really agreec on the basics,
I'm not sure the correlation means much. But if that is true it would
definitely make it more worth it.

~~~
cstross
I've just gone through the decline and death of an elderly relative.

She was able to use a Mac and browse the web a decade ago. Then she began to
forget how to do things she'd been proficient at a few years earlier. In the
past four years her ability to use the computer dropped to zero, and
attempting to get her onto an iPad instead failed (it was too
complicated/required too much learning -- I'd left it too late, not
recognizing the early signs of decline).

At the time of death she had medium to advanced vascular dementia; the point
is, cognitive decline in old age is a real thing, and people lose the ability
to do stuff they knew how to do at an earlier age.

------
mcintyre1994
> The detailed in-home survey of almost 2,000 Britons found that 18% described
> themselves as non-users.

I'm really curious what the methodology is here. "detailed in-home" suggests
it did something more than just ask people, but then it says they "described
themselves" as non-users. If you asked my mum she'd say she doesn't use the
internet, but if you sat down in her house with her you'd see she uses
Facebook and WhatsApp on her phone to communicate with friends and family, and
occasionally accidentally clicks a link that opens a browser. But she'll never
open a browser, doesn't actively use her email and would consider herself not
to use the internet.

------
ben_w
My first thought is of course surprise and shock that this number is so high.

My second thought is this is about the same number of British people who are
below the official poverty line[1], and of course food is a higher priority
than internet.

(It’s still shocking that the number is so high).

[1] [https://m.spiegel.de/international/europe/poverty-in-
notting...](https://m.spiegel.de/international/europe/poverty-in-nottingham-
the-uk-s-worsening-problem-a-1269597.html)

------
dghughes
I remember in the early to mid 1990s when many were amazed at the Internet
this new thing called the Web.

At that time I read that in the early 1990s only about 5% of the entire world
were using the Internet home user would be using it via dial-up. But the
shocking part was how many people in the world at that time did not even have
a telephone. I can't recall the percentage but it was quite high.

------
mcmullen
This shouldn't surprise anybody. Anecdotally speaking, most old folks I know
(of) watch television, read physical newspapers, and call/write/see people.
What do they need the internet for? I'm -- if anything -- surprised the number
isn't higher.

------
g051051
Or perhaps it's better to phrase it "over 80% of Britons use internet".

~~~
majewsky
Downvoted because, if you have a point to make, you forgot to include it in
the post.

~~~
g051051
Clickbait headline: "Almost one-fifth of Britons 'do not use internet'"

Non-clickbait version: "over 80% of Britons use internet"

How is that not clear? 80% internet usage is pretty good, not bad as the
headline and article suggest.

------
phjesusthatguy3
WhoTF is the Oxford Internet Institute?[0]

I understand I'm just a dumb American, but is the OII something anyone knows
anything about?

[0][https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/](https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/)

~~~
rwmj
It's a department in the University of Oxford. Unlike all those "Oxford School
of English" type of places, this one is actually noteworthy and part of the
real university.

~~~
phjesusthatguy3
Thank you. It looks like what I think BuzzFeed looks like but I was wrong.

------
Zenst
It would be nice to know how they did this survey, I'm presuming it wasn't an
online survey. But us Brits do love to lie to people doing surveys, just to
get away from them. Indeed, had they done this as an online survey - they
would still get people saying they do not use the internet.

~~~
benj111
Large surveys used to be done via the phone. I think they're moving over to
online surveys now.

Id be more concerned about the self selecting nature. There must be quite a
limited demographic willing to sign on to Yougov say, and complete surveys for
a very small financial reward.

~~~
Zenst
More so when the sample sizes will be within a timeframe (during 9-5 usually)
as well as being limited in size (very small samples given the scale) and in
this case 2,000 people is about 0.0003% of the population they project those
results upon.

~~~
pmyteh
It's an increasing struggle to get a good sample for surveys, as the rate of
people refusing has been going up continuously since surveys were invented.
This has methodological implications for survey researchers that are quite
serious. Some things aren't a problem, though. Survey companies definitely
work outside 9-5, and the 2,000 population sample turns out to be more than
enough: the sample size needed for a particular degree of statistical
confidence is independent of the population size (except for very small
populations) and remarkably few people are needed for a good sample. 2000 is
actually pretty large for survey research, where ~1000 is pretty standard.

~~~
vmilner
There's nothing like UK election polling for shaking confidence in getting
representative samples from the UK population.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_U...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election)

shows that two polls this week, each of ~2000 people, found the Conservatives
to have either a 1% or a 12% lead over Labour.

~~~
pmyteh
The British opinion polls are all over the place at the moment, yes. It's very
likely that these are not sampling issues, though. British politics is
currently in a period of realignment with the position of all parties in flux.

Election polling relies heavily on turnout modeling: it's not enough to know
what people's opinions are to predict elections, but also which of those
people are likely to vote. And the different polling companies have very
different models for that, and other 'artistic' parts of the modeling which
aren't strictly related to their polling sample. It certainly doesn't imply
problems for survey research as a whole (though, as I said, there are
increasingly long-term challenges to the while edifice).

------
bibinou
Please fix the title, the real number is 18% (of 2000 people surveyed)

Direct link to report:

[https://oxis.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp-
content/uploads/sites/43/2019/0...](https://oxis.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp-
content/uploads/sites/43/2019/09/OxIS-report-2019-final-digital-PDFA.pdf)

very interesting numbers nonetheless.

~~~
MiroF
is that not almost one fifth?

~~~
furyofantares
I thought parent comment was quibbling as well but it’s actually closer to
one-sixth and surprisingly this does affect my reaction to the information. So
I do think 18% would be a better title. The article does get there in the
second line at least (but not before saying “almost 20%” for no reason other
than to exaggerate, I guess.)

~~~
rwmj
Assuming the survey methodology allows us to scale this number to the whole
population, it would be nearly 12 million people (0.18 * 66 million = 11.88
million). Quite a staggering number no matter what percentage it is.

~~~
DanBC
You included all the two year olds in your 66 million.

~~~
rwmj
Very true. Do you know a figure for UK pop above the age of 8? I can't find
that with some quick searching.

