A new quiz by Pew has set out to find how much the average person knows about the internet, and how that breaks down by demographic. They studied this by asking a small collection of questions related to the internet and common technology (such as the iPhone, Facebook, and Net Neutrality), and saw how people responded.
The quiz, which you can take at the official website listed at the end of this article, is a simple one. It has twelve question, and asks about social networks, current tech laws, for some definitions, and what figures in the technology business world are being shown in pictures. They then ask for your gender and age range.
It is an incredibly quick quiz, but how you do might be a surprise. It seems to work off of the assumption that many basic details we may have heard at one point just didn’t stick, which could be true of a number of categories.
People tended to know a fair amount about platforms and tech they use on a regular basis. The problem begins for about three-quarters when it starts to get into underlying internet functions and basics. For example, what URL stands for, or what Moore’s Law dictates. Neither of which I will give the answers to, in case you want to take the quiz yourself.
What I found interesting about the results is that while college grads tended to know more about some internet terms, on the whole it was not so split in favor of younger users. In fact, a lot of the knowledge seemed to be pretty even keeled across all ages and genders.Only a couple of questions saw a sharp drop in elders over 65, such as what university first saw Facebook.
This shows that the gap with technology is not nearly as wide as it has been with past generations. As the internet becomes more and more ingrained in our daily lives, it is becoming more standard for everyone. Even those who in the past might have been lost, now that we are entering a more ostensibly “user-friendly” internet age.
Given the fact my grandmother regularly contacts me on Facebook, but she still owns a VCR, this shouldn’t be nearly as surprising as it was to me. The internet is a great unifier, in many regards.
Source: Pew Research Center
