Incomplete change

Yesterday I talked about the pushback I received from some older listeners who (apparently) wanted nothing to do with the Internet. One of them came around (some) when I explained I wasn't talking about computers, but about the WTJU website that could be accessed by either a smartphone or a tablet -- no PC necessary.

Which got me thinking. It's easy for me to think of people who seldom venture online as a minority of irrelevant dinosaurs -- but are they really?

24.9 percent of all American adults have no land line in their home
-- which means that 75.1 percent still do.

35 percent of all Americans own a smartphone
 -- which means that 65 percent don't

19 percent of all American adults own a tablet
-- which means that 81 percent don't.

All of these figures tend to skew young. Half of the wireless-only homes are those of 20-somethings, for example. So if I were to go to a Starbucks, then there's a good chance the majority of folks I would run into would have smartphones, tablets, and probably no land line.

And these technologies are trending. So if we were to revisit these figures a year from now, the percentages would be higher.

But for now, the old technologies (and old technology users) are reluctantly giving up their hold. Which tells me I need to keep those new technology on-air plugs short and sweet.