Mixed Feelings About the Web

Americans have a love/hate relationship with online content, says a report from the Center for the Digital Future. The survey shows we spend the equivalent of more than two workdays online every week. We clearly prefer the Internet as a source of information, as opposed to television or newspapers. We purchase lots of products off the Web. But we don't like online ads, or paid content walls. We also increasingly distrust Web content. "Internet users deal with an unprecedented level of online connections and communication beyond basic e-mail that did not exist a decade ago: social networking sites, online video, PDAs, texting, IM, e-readers, portable video devices, and most recently, the iPad and competing devices to come," says Jeffrey I. Cole, director of the Center for the Digital Future, based at the University of Southern California. "Through this technology, users must rely on the Internet more than ever before. Have we reached the point at which users are going into 'online overload?'"