Americans are afraid of technology, concludes a survey

The Internet Education Foundation (IEF) conducted a survey on January 25th, in which 886 Americans were polled. The survey concluded that around 44% of Americans would feel "uncomfortable" if they had to accept bitcoin payments. The focus of the survey was on how the recent technological innovation is being accepted by American citizens. The survey mainly discussed issues related to the famous trends of 2017, which are: fake news, democracy, digital security, and cryptocurrency.
The Internet Education Foundation (IEF) is a charitable organization focused on debating the latest technology issues. IEF conducted a survey on Jan. 25th, which polled 886 Americans.

The focus of the survey was on how recent technological innovations are being accepted by American citizens. The survey mainly discussed issues related to 2017's most important trends, which were fake news, democracy, digital security, and cryptocurrency.

You are most probably aware of the buzz regarding how fake news influenced the 2016 US Presidential elections. The elections inaugurated Donald Trump as the 45th president of the US. However, many cried foul, and critics claimed that fake news, which had been disseminated over social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, greatly influenced American voters.

The majority of individuals who participated in the poll were of the opinion that the internet has damaged democracy and weakened it.

The sampled participants were surveyed regarding how they felt towards accepting payments in the form of bitcoin. An overwhelming majority of 43.91% of the surveyed sample responded that they would feel “very uncomfortable” if they had to accept payments in the form of Bitcoin. This leads to an important question: can the financial revolution that Bitcoin promises ever materialize?

Why are so many people still uncomfortable with accepting Bitcoin payments? It is very much possible that the recent severe fluctuation in bitcoin’s price is scaring people away. The volatility of Bitcoin has become a joke, which is perfectly summarized in the following Tweet.



Another reason, underpinning the hesitance to accept bitcoin as a payment, could be that many Americans simply don’t understand what cryptocurrency really is. It’s not just Americans, as a year ago, not many knew about Bitcoin.

It’s a known fact that people are scared of what they don’t understand. Although Bitcoin came into existence in 2009, a lot of people haven't heard about it yet.

This could be a major reason why people are still so reluctant to use bitcoin as a currency. This might seem surprising given the fact that Bitcoin has grown tremendously reaching a market cap of $179,799,854,465, which is more than the GDP of a few countries.

However, when participants were asked about the impact of the internet on their lives, 46.84% replied that it had a positive influence. This means that even though Americans are afraid of Bitcoin and fake news, they believe that the internet has played an important, positive role in their lives.