Across the board, the average number of people surfing in each WWW household is 2.02. In households that have children under 18 at home, the average number of surfers is 2.21. Where no children are present, the average is 1.87. Despite its academic origins, the Internet today is used mostly for personal reasons. As shown below, the two most common uses are seeking out specific information for personal use and communicating through e-mail or chat rooms.
Some homes have three or even four computers from which they can access the Internet.
The primary differentiator between households with one online computer and those with more is that multi-station homes are more at ease with the Web. They have been on it longer, are more comfortable with it, and spend more time on it. Web-surfing households tend to keep their computers up to date. Netscape takes the prize as the most popular browser used to access the World Wide Web. According to our study, more than twice as many households signed on in the most recent six months than in the six months prior.