Millions of Americans Still Don’t Have Internet at Home, U.S. Census Data Says

An increasing number of households in the United States are getting home internet, but there are still millions of Americans who don’t have an internet connection in their home. Federal data indicates states with higher rates of poverty also have higher numbers of homes without internet—but home internet rates in some of those states are growing quickly.

Reviews.org took a deep dive into U.S. Census data to examine the numbers and analyze recent trends in internet accessibility.

Findings of 2022 ACS survey at a glance:

• Around 11.5 million (8.8%) of U.S. households don’t have home internet, and 4.3% don’t have a computer.
• The number of households without internet has declined around 2% year over year since 2015.
• Around 175,522 households use dial-up internet at home.
• New Hampshire, Utah, and Washington are the most connected states.
• Mississippi, Louisiana and West Virginia are the least connected states

An estimated 8.8% of households in the United States—or around 11.5 million homes—don’t have a home internet connection, according to 2022 survey data from the U.S. Census Bureau. However, that number has fallen dramatically in recent years, as the number of homes without internet in 2015 was around 22.8%.

Although the number of Americans with internet access is going up, advocates worry that the recent end of the Affordable Connectivity Program could stand in the way of increased access. “Affordability is a huge barrier to getting home internet service,” say Corian Zacher and Stacey Baxter, two staff members of Next Century Cities, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit that pushes for increased broadband access nationwide. “Competition helps, but the Affordable Connectivity Program was so essential and brought over 22 million households online and then the program ended because of a lack of funding.”

Around half of the homes without internet in 2022 also don’t have a computer, which makes up roughly 4.3% of U.S. households.  

The same survey found the vast majority of American households—around 75.9%, or roughly 98 million homes—have a DSL, cable, or fiber internet connection. Around 11.2% of households have only a cellular data plan with no other types of internet connection. Only around 8.6 million households rely on satellite internet. While DSL is a slower type of connection, it’s often the most affordable way for people in rural areas to get online, according to Zacher and Baxter.

“Many residents still relying on DSL connections live in areas where the only other technology available is satellite, which is often prohibitively expensive,” the two said in an email exchange with Reviews.org.

Just a small fraction of Americans still use a nearly ancient way of getting online: Dial up. The Census data estimates there are roughly 175,000 Americans who still use the dated, phone line-dependent method to access the internet. With tech advances like fiber and fixed wireless internet, dial-up is largely considered an outdated and impractical way to get online, which makes the Census figure all the more surprising.

For some who live in very rural parts of the U.S., dial-up might be the cheapest, most convenient option—though new methods of getting online, like mobile hotspots, are usually just as affordable and more effective. Other dial-up users seem drawn to the vintage novelty of it. “I just use dial-up for the fun of it,” one Reddit user tells Reviews.org. “I mainly just mess around with old hardware for learning and to have something interesting in my lab.”

While the internet’s absence in nearly one in 10 U.S. households isn’t good, it’s certainly an improvement over the last decade. The same Census data estimates that 22.8% of homes didn’t have an internet connection in 2015—compared to 8.8% in 2022. Between 2016 and 2021, the country’s “offline population” declined by roughly 2% per year.

Roughly 15 million American households now have a home internet connection that didn’t have one in 2015—an increase of 14%, according to the Census data.

Despite the increased number of Americans working from home and children attending school during the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2% rate of yearly change remained relatively consistent, according to the data. Between 2019 and 2021, when the virus began to spread in the U.S. and remained a consistent issue, the percentage of households without internet dropped from 13.4% to 9.7%.

The least-connected state in the country is Mississippi, as only 84.4% of its households have an internet connection, according to the Census data. Just ahead of the Magnolia State are Louisiana (85.5%), West Virginia (86.7%), New Mexico (86.8%), and Arkansas (86.9%) in the bottom five states for connectivity.

A lack of internet connection seems to correlate with a state’s poverty level, as the five states mentioned also have the highest levels of poverty, according to 2022 estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau.

On the other hand, the most connected state is New Hampshire, with an estimated 94.1% of households having an internet connection. Utah (93.8%), Washington (93.7%), California (93.5%), and Colorado (93.3%) round out the top five states with the highest percentage of households with internet.

Three of these states—New Hampshire, Utah, and Colorado—are also among the five states with the lowest poverty rates among residents, according to Census data.

Though states like Mississippi and Arkansas are among the top five states with the highest number of unconnected homes, both have made substantial improvements since 2019. Census data shows the number of homes in Mississippi and Arkansas with internet connectivity grew by 24.3% and 22.4%, respectively—the largest increases among U.S. states.

Every state in the U.S. has seen a growing number of homes with internet connectivity. Here’s how each state’s home internet connectivity has grown since 2019:

To get our ranking of the states with the most and least connected households, we sourced the latest published data from the 2022 American Community Survey. ACS 1-year estimates were used to get the most up-to-date information on a state level. Rural poverty rate was obtained from the USDA ERS State Fact Sheets. 

Here’s a full view of US home internet connectivity at a state-by-state level. We ranked each state by the total percent of households that have either a broadband (cable, DSL, or fiber), dial-up, or satellite internet connection at home.