The Web IQ" of American Internet Users % of finternet users answering each question correctly Who is this tech leader (from photo)?* Bill Gates Hashtags widely used in which place? Twitter PDF file can be sent by any email program? True Bigger amount of info, kilobyte or megabyte? Megabyte "Wiki" is an online collaboration tool? True -Net Neutrality" refers to? Equal treatment of digital content 61 First university on Facebook? Harvard
Substantial majorities of internet users are able to correctly answer questions about some common technology platforms and everyday internet usage terms. Around three-quarters know that a megabyte is bigger than a kilobyte, roughly seven in ten are able to identify pictures corresponding to terms like “captcha” and “advanced search,” and 66% know that a “wiki” is a tool that allows people to modify online content in collaboration with others. A substantial majority of online adults do not use Twitter, but knowledge of Twitter conventions is fairly widespread nonetheless: 82% of online Americans are aware that hashtags are most commonly used on the social networking platform, and 60% correctly answer that the service limits tweets to 140 characters.
On the other hand, relatively few internet users are familiar with certain concepts that underpin the internet and other modern technological advances. Only one third (34%) know that Moore’s Law relates to how many transistors can be put on a microchip, and just 23% are aware that “the Internet” and “the World Wide Web” do not, in fact, refer to the same thing.
Many online Americans also struggle with key facts relating to early—and in some cases, more recent—technological history. Despite an Oscar-winning movie (The Social Network) about the story of Facebook’s founding, fewer than half of internet users (42%) are able to identify Harvard as the first university to be on the site; and only 36% correctly selected 2007 as the year the first iPhone was released. The Mosaic web browser is an especially poorly-remembered pioneer of the early Web, as just 9% of online Americans are able to correctly identify Mosaic as the first widely popular graphical web browser.
The Web IQ" of American Internet Users  | % of finternet users answering each question correctly  | Who is this tech leader (from photo)?* Bill Gates  | 83%  | Hashtags widely used in which place? Twitter  | 82  | PDF file can be sent by any email program? True  | Bigger amount of info, kilobyte or megabyte? Megabyte  | "URL" stands for? Uniform Resource Locator  | 69  | "Wiki" is an online collaboration tool? True  | -Net Neutrality" refers to? Equal treatment of digital content 61  | Twitter has 140 character limit? True  | 60  | Privacy policy means company keeps user  | False  | info confidential?  | First university on Facebook? Harvard  | First Phone released in whatyear? 2007  | 36  | Moore 's Law number oftransistors on a  | True  | 34  | computer chip?  | Internet and WWW are the same? False  | 23  | Who is this internet leader (from photo)?*  | 21 Shery Sandberg  | First popular graphical welb browser?  | Mosaic  | Survev conducted September question 12-18 2014 among adultinternet users  | *Indicates visual September question for which respondents were shown images  | PEW RESEARCH CENTER 