Hoffman, Donna L., Thomas P. Novak, and Alladi Venkataesh, "Has The Internet Become Indispensable? Empirical Findings and Model Development," (April 2004).
Abstract. We seem to be in the midst of an Internet revolution and entering the age of digital connectivity. The pace of social change resulting from the diffusion of this technology, both nationally and globally is, by many accounts, dramatic. In less than ten years, the Internet has become indispensable to many people in their daily lives. What are the consequences of this? In this paper, we introduce the idea that the Internet is becoming increasingly essential to families and the society at large, present some data to support our contentions and develop a conceptual model that allows for the testing of key hypotheses related to Internet indispensability as next steps.
In this paper we explore the idea that the Internet has become indispensable to people in their daily lives, and develop a conceptual model that allows us to address the research questions this idea raises. The idea is that the Internet has become so embedded into the daily fabric of people’s lives that they simply cannot live with out it. How is the Internet indispensable and in what ways? For which groups of people is it indispensable, for what tasks, and how has this changed their lives and our society as a whole?
We take on these questions as follows. First, we provide some data from two national studies of American households that support our contention that the Internet has become indispensable on several key dimensions. Next, we summarize broader discussions of indispensability drawn from the literature. Then, we present our conceptual model and suggest research directions for the future. We conclude with several comments on the social and policy implications that arise from the fact that increasing numbers of individuals would be unwilling to give up their access to the Internet if asked, as they have come to consider it indispensable. Download pdf.
