The Web is turning 25-years-old next month. In celebration of the revolutionary invention's anniversary, the Pew Research Center conducted a poll about the impact Americans think the Internet has had on their lives.
In 2014, 90 percent of Americans think the Internet has personally been a good thing for them, according to a summary of Pew's findings.
The results also showed that 76 percent of Internet users consider the Internet as beneficial for society. Only 15 percent said the Internet has been bad.
Researchers polled 1,006 adults ages 18 and older. The poll showed how sentiments about the use of the World Wide Web, along with cellphone ownership, changed over the past two decades.
A 2006 poll asked adults if whether or not they thought it would be difficult to give up certain technologies. Of the respondents, 38 percent said it would be "very hard" to give up the Internet and 43 percent said it would be hard to give up their cellphone.
Now, in 2014, 53 percent of adults said it would be hard to give up the Internet, and 49 percent said they could not give up their phone, Pew's results said.
The concept for the World Wide Web emerged in 1989 when Tim Berners-Lee wrote a paper about the idea of an "information management" system that made it easier for people to access data and connect over the Internet. The center acknowledged that most people think the Internet and the World Wide Web are the same thing. Technically, however, they are not.
"The internet is rules (protocols) that enable computer networks to communicate with each other," the center said. "The Web is a service that uses the network to allow computers access files and pages that are hosted on other computers."
Pew's research, in partnership with Elon University's Imagining the Internet project, will be released in a series of eight reports over the next few months.
