Ed Katkin, my advisor in graduate school, used to say that there are two types of researchers: lumpers and splitters. Lumpers look for universal rules and valid generalizations about human behavior. Splitters are more interested in studying how individuals differ from each other. Many of the discussions in this hypertext book The Psychology of Cyberspace comes from the splitter's perspective. Much of it is based on psychological theory and conceptualization. Sometimes, however, it's nice just to have the hardcore facts about the people who inhabit the internet. The statistics below are Nielsen/NetRatings from a story in Internet World and were reported by John Grohol to the Psychology of the Internet mailing list. It's been several years since I first posted these stats here in The Psychology of Cyberspace, so they are dated now. Nevertheless, in addition to being an interesting glimpse into the past, such statistics raise important questions about how demographic factors might influence the social dynamics of cyberspace, as well as how cyberspace reflects the global culture. You can read the statistics for yourself and come to your own conclusions. Here and there, as indicated by the links, I've taken the liberty of adding my 2 cents (these pop-up windows may not work with all browsers). Whenever we evaluate statistics like these, we should keep in mind the problem of "sampling bias" - i.e., did the survey method result in a sample that is an accurate representation of all people on the internet? Mark Twain once said, "There are three types of lies: lies, damned lies.... and statistics."

Number of Americans Online: 76 million	Male: 52.7%
Total people worldwide: 149 million	Female: 47.3%

Age:
0-17	19.1%
18-24	11.3%
25-34	19.1%
35-44	23.0%
45-54	17.2%
55-64	6.7%
65+	3.7%

Income:
$0-25k	6.4%
$25-50k	25.8%
$50-75k	28.6%
$75-100k	17.5%
$100-150k	10.4%
$150-$1m	4.9%
No response	6.4%

Education:
Grammar school	1.5%
Some H.S.	5.7%
H.S. graduate	18.8%
Some college	20.9%
Associate degree	9.5%
Bachelor's degree	25.1%
Post-graduate degree	16.9%
No response	1.6%

Race:
White	83.5%
African-American	8.0%
Asian	2.1%
American Indian	1.0%
Other	4.0%
No response	1.9%

Geography:
North American	55.5%
Western Europe	23.3%
Asia Pacific	15.5%
Eastern Europe/Russia	2.0%
Latin America	1.8%
Middle East/Africa	1.9%

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