What Pew’s sharing economy report tells us about language

On Thursday, D.C.-based Pew Research Center released its first report on the “shared, collaborative and on-demand economy.” A survey of 4,787 U.S. adults found that 72 percent has used at least one shared or on-demand service.
The report focuses in on ride-hailing apps (Uber, Lyft), home-sharing platforms (Airbnb, VRBO) and crowdsourcing platforms (Kickstarter, Indiegogo, etc.) and takes a look at who’s using these services and, critically, who’s not.
Tl;dr:

• The results are a good reminder that while to the young, well-off city-dweller these services can feel ubiquitous, that’s not the case for all Americans.

Indeed, as is discussed at length here and here, the on-demand economy is primarily within the purview of the young, college-educated person with a high annual household income. The data urges us to keep in mind that, as Aaron Smith, associate director at Pew and author of the study writes in a press release, “some Americans have deeply integrated these platforms into their day-to-day lives — but a larger number exist on the fringes of the sharing and on-demand economy.”
However, there was another result that caught our attention, and this one has to do with vocabulary. The Pew report revealed that 61 percent of Americans are not familiar with the term “crowdfunding,” 73 percent haven’t heard “sharing economy,” and even more, a full 89 percent, don’t know what “gig economy” means.
Just as access to these products and services is limited, so is access to the vocabulary we use to describe them. And that’s a good thing to remember for those of us who seek to communicate (and don’t we all) — not everyone speaks tech.