Are You an IT Omnivore? Take the Quiz

Are you a "deep user" of technology? Click this link to take an online quiz developed by the Pew Internet & American Life Project to see how you compare with fellow Americans in information and communications technology adoption.

According to new research by the project, 8 percent of Americans are “omnivore” consumers of online gadgets and services and heavy participants in Web 2.0 activities.

At a broader level of generalization, the survey categorizes U.S. adults into three main groups: 31 percent of adults are “elite tech users” (including omnivores); about 20 percent are “middle of the road tech users;” and about 49 percent of the adult population is comprised of individuals who have “few tech assets."

Pew describes this latter group has having a “distant or non-existent relationship” with modern information technology. It includes the 27 percent of the population that doesn’t have a cell phone.

Omnivores, it should come as no surprise, have the youngest median age: 28 years old, versus a median age of 53 of the “light but satisfied” group that least uses information and communications technology.

“Some of this diffidence is driven by people’s concerns about information overload; some is related to people’s sense that their gadgets have more capacity than users can master; some is connected to people’s sense that things like blogging and creating home-brew videos for YouTube is not for them; and some is rooted in people’s inability to afford or their unwillingness to buy the gear that would bring them into the digital age,” according to Pew.

The survey, released on May 7, sampled 4,001 people aged 18 and older via telephone interviews earlier this year and has a sampling error of 2 percentage points.

Hat tip: Physorg.com