1 in 7 Americans is offline. Why? It's complicated

A small and persistent swath of Americans remain offline -- 15 percent of adults ages 18 and older, as of May 2013 -- and in most cases were never online to begin with. Are offline adults abstaining from Internet use due to a lack of interest, or are they prevented from logging on due to a lack of access? Even with our latest data, it's a tricky question to sort out.

As with many technology adoption trends, Internet use remains strongly correlated with age, education and household income. Groups with lower levels of Internet adoption than average include:

• Adults ages 65 and older (56 percent use the Internet)
• Adults who did not complete high school (59 percent) and those who completed high school but did not attend college (78 percent)
• Hispanic adults (76 percent)
• Adults in households earning less than $30,000 per year (76 percent)
• While seniors account for almost half of offline adults overall, age isn't the whole story. For instance, most non-Internet users did not attend college; offline adults are also more likely to be retired than their online counterparts, and more likely to live in lower-income households in general. While most of these offline adults don't cite price or a lack of physical access to the Internet as the main reason they don't go online, their general lack of experience with and knowledge of the online world suggest that most would not be able to choose to go online tomorrow if they wished.