V38-01

Question

Economist: A recent survey found that in countries with higher rates of internet censorship, there are also higher rates of internet usage per capita. This seems counterintuitive because one might expect that restrictions on internet content would deter usage.
 
Which of the following, if true and known by the residents of these countries, would best help explain the paradoxical results of the survey?

A. Many residents in countries with higher internet censorship use the internet primarily for work-related purposes, which are not affected by censorship policies.
B. Residents in countries with high internet censorship often use proxy servers and VPNs, which allow them to bypass restrictions and access a broader range of content online.
C. There is an observed trend in the data collection methodology where internet usage metrics might include both direct and indirect engagement metrics, which vary significantly between surveyed regions.
D. Countries with high rates of internet censorship often have higher populations, thus naturally leading to a higher total number of internet users.
E. The survey included responses from a disproportionate number of young people, who tend to use the internet more frequently regardless of censorship levels.

Bunuel · Answer

Official Solution:

Economist: A recent survey found that in countries with higher rates of internet censorship, there are also higher rates of internet usage per capita. This seems counterintuitive because one might expect that restrictions on internet content would deter usage.
 
Which of the following, if true and known by the residents of these countries, would best help explain the paradoxical results of the survey?

A. Many residents in countries with higher internet censorship use the internet primarily for work-related purposes, which are not affected by censorship policies.
B. Residents in countries with high internet censorship often use proxy servers and VPNs, which allow them to bypass restrictions and access a broader range of content online.
C. There is an observed trend in the data collection methodology where internet usage metrics might include both direct and indirect engagement metrics, which vary significantly between surveyed regions.
D. Countries with high rates of internet censorship often have higher populations, thus naturally leading to a higher total number of internet users.
E. The survey included responses from a disproportionate number of young people, who tend to use the internet more frequently regardless of censorship levels.

Correct Answer: B. Residents in countries with high internet censorship often use proxy servers and VPNs, which allow them to bypass restrictions and access a broader range of content online. 
 
This option resolves the paradox by suggesting that despite high levels of censorship, residents find ways to circumvent these restrictions using technology like VPNs and proxy servers. This allows them to access content freely, thus maintaining or even increasing internet usage rates, because they can circumvent the censorship online, which cannot be circumvented in other channels such as print, TV, or radio content. This answer is also one of the only ones that fits into the condition identified in the question "if true and known by the residents of these countries" - if you read that element of the question carefully, this answer choice would likely jump out at you more than others such as C for example talking about vague measurement differences.
 
 A. Many residents in countries with higher internet censorship use the internet primarily for work-related purposes, which are not affected by censorship policies. 
 
This answer choice does not resolve the paradox of high personal or leisure use in the face of censorship. It ignores how censorship impacts broader internet usage habits beyond work-related activities. This also makes the paradox less explained because it implies that the internet is used primarily for work-related purposes and thus should result in less usage per capita as it would not be used as much in non-working hours for leisure. Eliminate.
 
 C. There is an observed trend in the data collection methodology where internet usage metrics might include both direct and indirect engagement metrics, which vary significantly between surveyed regions. 
 
This option is deliberately confusing and unclear and is also a trap. This choice introduces ambiguity rather than clarifying the paradox. We do not know if the "vary significantly between surveyed regions" varies one way or another - you may assume this explains but we only know it varied. We are also not sure how indirect engagement would be explaining the paradox and what is even indirect engagement? When an answer choice is vague like this, and asks you to come out of your comfort zone to nail you in the end, it is very likely incorrect. Eliminate cautiously.
 
 D. Countries with high rates of internet censorship often have higher populations, thus naturally leading to a higher total number of internet users. 
 
A larger population does not explain higher per capita internet usage under censorship. This choice is mixing apples and oranges. Eliminate.
 
 E. The survey included responses from a disproportionate number of young people, who tend to use the internet more frequently regardless of censorship levels. 
 
This choice suggests a possible skew in the survey data, which might misrepresent actual usage patterns across the entire population and it would impact all of the usage in censored and uncensored countries. However, this issue with survey data would impact both censored and uncensored countries, so the net impact would be zero (both areas surveyed would have large number of young people) and would not explain the paradox. Eliminate.

Answer: B

dragon717 · Answer

I think this is a  poor-quality  question and the explanation isn't clear enough, please elaborate.

bb · Answer

Sure. Here are 100 different ways to explain this question: https://gmatclub.com/forum/gmat-club-ol ... 32196.html Let me know what part of the explanation is not clear enough. Thank you.

suranamohit2694 · Answer

Option B  doesn't  tell me why countries with higher rates of internet censorship have higher rates of internet usage  per capita .

If people of Country X (with restriction) bypass restrictions, then this country is as good as Country Y (without restrictions).  What accounts for a higher usage per capita?

Option E is the best of the lot since it directly points towards a sample flaw. I strongly believe B is not the right answer. What am I missing?

AbhishekP220108 · Answer

Hi  suranamohit2694  let me try to help.

Economist: A recent survey found that in countries with higher rates of internet censorship, there are also higher rates of internet usage per capita.-
So an Economist is an author here, he referred to the survey that tells Higher rates of Internet censorship-> higher rates of internet usage

This seems counterintuitive because one might expect that restrictions on internet content would deter usage.- According to an argument, this data is surprising because if there is high rate of censorship, then the internet usage has to be lower.

Which of the following, if true and known by the residents of these countries, would best help explain the paradoxical results of the survey?

The question asks to find why this trend is present. So we have to find another premise that justifies the paradox shown, the best among the given options

Lets evaluate B and E

E. The survey included responses from a disproportionate number of young people, who tend to use the internet more frequently regardless of censorship levels.- This says that the survey is not representative and attacks the premise; however, in a paradox, we have to consider the premise as fact, and we can't challenge it. We are not here to weaken the argument. So eliminated

B. Residents in countries with high internet censorship often use proxy servers and VPNs, which allow them to bypass restrictions and access a broader range of content online.- This option tells that residents use proxy servers and VPNs, which helps to access a broader range of content; if the content range is broad, usage will be too; basically, it justifies why there is a higher rate of internet usage even though the censorship rate is higher.

Hope this helps

suranamohit2694 · Answer

Then shouldn't the question use "high per capita usage" instead of "higher per capita usage"?

"Higher" is comparative. In the question what are we comparing the usage per capita with?

AbhishekP220108 · Answer

Hi  suranamohit2694  well thats quite an observation, however the premise is given as correlation and its not that the restrictions are high or at some maximum level. Also the comparison was mentioned between the countries in terms of restriction

Like suppose there are 3 countries A B and C

A has 30 restrictions and 1gb/person
B has 35 restrictions and 1.5gb/person
C has 42 restrictions and 2gb/person

And the questions asks why is that relation exist, so that is the comparison.

Hope its clear

RonPurewal · Answer

Choice B gives, at most, a reason why the per-capita internet usage in high-censorship countries might be  higher that would otherwise be expected by default —but choice B gives us no reason at all why the internet usage in those countries is  higher than in countries with less censorship  (the correlation stated in the prompt/passage).

If the material that can be accessed through VPN/proxy/shadowsocks is the same range of material that people can freely access in countries with more liberal access to the internet, then choice B would be expected to push the internet usage   up towards   the usage rates seen in less restrictive countries—by roughly the proportion of people who are willing and able to use the VPN/proxy/shadowsocks. It wouldn't be expected to boost the internet usage rate all the way up to the corresponding figure for the countries with less restricted access.
(Even if 100% of the population were computer-savvy enough to use those things—a completely unreasonable edge case—we would just expect the internet usage rates to converge to   the same levels   seen in the countries with more freedom, since nothing is stated that suggests that demand would be asymmetrical either way.)

This reasoning is based on assuming—without justification—that  there is also high censorship of other types of media . The opening sentence states very specifically that the countries in question have high rates of   INTERNET   censorship; absolutely nothing is stated or implied about the conditions imposed on other types of media. (GMAC's problems have absolute respect for this type of boundary between what's supported and what's unsupported, so our problems should too.)

.

Suggestion for how to fix the logic:

• Restate the paradox as, "The  average internet user  in uses significantly  more gigabytes of data per month  in countries with broad censorship of the internet than in countries with far fewer restrictions on internet access."

• Change choice B to say that a   large proportion   of internet users in these countries make   regular use   of VPNs/proxies,   which more than double the volume of data that must be transmitted in order to load typical online content  .

This way choice B has the quantitative parts that it needs to be a correct answer. (It also becomes irrelevant if fewer people use the internet overall in the countries with tight censorship.)

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