The Pew Research Center, a ” fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world,” has done a study on Americans that has revealed how little we actually know about the internet. The organization surveyed a sample group of 1,066 individuals for their knowledge on technology and the internet. The results are pretty astounding. Before we reveal them to you, why don’t you take the test and see how well you know the internet and technology.
- Who is this tech leader?Answer
- Hash-tags widely used in this place?Answer
- PDF files can be sent by any email program.Answer
- What is bigger? A kilobyte or a megabyte?Answer
- What does URL stand for?Answer
- True or False, a Wiki is an online collaboration tool?Answer
- What does Net Neutrality stand for?Answer
- True or False, Twitter currently has a 140 character limit?Answer
- True or False, a company with a privacy policy signifies that they will keep your information safe?Answer
- What was the first university to get access to Facebook?Answer
- What year was the first iPhone released in?Answer
- True or False, Moore’s law states that history has shown that the number of transistors on a computer chip doubles approximately every two years?Answer
- True or False, the Internet and the World Wide Web are the same?Answer
- Who is the internet leader in the photo below?Answer
- What was the first popular graphical web browser?Answer
How did you do? If you answered “true” to the internet and the world-wide web being different, you’re smarter than 77% of Americans. Well done! Take a look at the results from the sample below:
Some of these questions were relatively tough. I’m not sure that a lack of knowledge of the acronym URL is really going to hurt American’s ability to use technology. Nor do I think that it is critical to know Bill Gates’ face. However, a seriously alarming statistic is that 56% of American’s responded that if a company has a privacy policy it means they keeps user information confidential. This is simply not the case. In fact, a privacy policy often is the way in which companies disclose the ways in which they share our information with third parties. If there is anything we can learn from this study it is that we need to become more educated on what a privacy policy is and how it should impact the way in which we interact on various websites.
How did you do on the quiz? Are you a technology mogul like Robert Herjavec? Or simply a rad Tweeter? Let us know in the comments below.