The Internet and Daily Life

Nearly two-thirds of the American population is now online. Internet use continues to spread from work to home, and now to Americans' on-the-go lives. Increasing numbers access the Web via broadband connections. The storehouse of available and searchable content is ever-expanding, and Americans' collective appetite for it seems boundless.

In this report, the Pew Internet & American Life Project explore what this activity on the Internet means to the mundane moments of everyday life. These moments mean the stuff of day-to-day living--from getting the news to buying movie tickets to paying bills to scheduling lunch.

The Project has done a great deal of research focused on the basics of what Americans do online. Their work shows, for example, that applications of e-mail and search are the most popular activities and that transactions like banking are the fastest growing.