Almost 65 Million Americans Online

Approximately 64.2 million US adults (32.5 percent of the adult population) currently use the Internet, according to the Spring 1999 CyberStats report from Mediamark Research Inc.

The previous CyberStats report, issued in November of 1998 by Mediamark, showed that 53.5 million adults had used the Internet in an average 30-day period. This means that regular Internet usage increased by 20 percent between the two CyberStats reporting periods.

The number of US adults with Internet access, either at home or at work, climbed 16.3 percent, to 83.7 million, according to Mediamark. That’s 42.4 percent of the US adults age 18 and over.

Mediamark estimates that 44.9 million people are estimated to have accessed the Net from home versus 31.3 million from work during the survey period. Men still use the Internet more than women, according to the survey (51.4 percent vs. 48.6 percent).

According to Mediamark, 53.1 million adult Americans have used an online service. America Online had the most reported users, at 28.6 million. MSN was second at 7.96 million, followed by CompuServe (1.96 million) and Prodigy (1.93 million).

The Spring CyberStats data are from an average 30-day period within the survey time frame (March 1998 to February 1999). The survey time frame for the Fall 1998 CyberStats was September 1997 to August 1998.