This week on Time Machine, we are jumping back to a time when your inbox wasn’t overflowing with unread emails!
Let’s hop back to 1998 when Apple released the first iMac and Google was founded. Americans Talk Issues Foundation asked Americans whether or not they had an email. Only 31% said they did and 69% said they didn’t.
A few years later, in 2004, as Facebook, the iPod, and Gmail were in their very early days, Pew asked again and the numbers had, predictably, changed. Now, 72% said they used email or the internet.
That same year, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation asked Americans whether they had gone online only to use email. Now, 63% said they had and 37% said they had not.
This was essentially a flip from the numbers in 1998.
But, even in this early internet/email era, there were already worries about what this all meant for kids.
Pew asked parents with teenagers 12-17 years old who had used email or went online whether email and the internet had been a “good thing,” a “bad thing,” or “not affected” their kids. More than two-thirds — 67% — said it had been positive, 25% said it had no effect, and just 5% said it was a bad thing.
And now?
Marquette Law School asked Americans in 2022 whether they used the internet or email at least occasionally. 100% that said they had. That’s not a number we see in polling…ever!
But someday it’s certain that email will be replaced by some other tech and then pollsters can resume asking the question…as the percentage of “yes I use email” starts returning to its roots.
TTYL for our next Time Machine!
This post was written by Marist Poll Media Team member Hunter Petro.