Pew Center Finds Gap Among US Hispanic Web Users

The Pew Hispanic Center and Pew Internet Project have jointly released a report entitled, Latinos Online." Latinos comprise 14% of the U.S. adult population and about half of this growing group (56%) goes online.

By comparison, 71% of non-Hispanic whites and 60% of non-Hispanic blacks use the internet. Several socio-economic characteristics that are often intertwined, such as low levels of education and limited English ability, largely explain the gap in Internet use between Hispanics and non-Hispanics.

Mexicans are the largest national origin group in the U.S. Latino population and are among the least likely groups to go online: 52% of Latinos of Mexican descent use the Internet. Even when age, income, language, generation, or nativity is held constant, being Mexican is associated with a decreased likelihood of going online.

Internet use is uniformly low for whites (32%), Hispanics (31%), and African Americans (25%) who have not completed high school. However, 41% of Latino adults have not finished high school, compared with about one in ten non-Hispanic whites and one in five African Americans. The same pattern is evident at the other end of the spectrum of educational attainment. College-educated adults all have equally high levels (about 90%) of Internet use regardless of race or ethnicity, yet the college educated make up a smaller share of the Latino population when compared with non-Hispanics.

Language is also a powerful factor, as Internet use is much higher among Latinos who speak and read English fluently than among those who have limited English abilities or who only speak Spanish. Language is not an issue in the white and black populations as the shares of adults with limited English abilities is quite small.

A statistical analysis of the survey results shows education and language are each highly significant factors when other differences in group characteristics are taken into account. When the different levels of language or education are controlled statistically, Hispanics and non-Hispanics show similar levels of Internet use.

The Pew Internet Project is a non-profit, non-partisan initiative of the Pew Research Center that produces reports exploring the impact of the Internet on children, families, communities, the work place, schools, health care, and civic/political life. Support for the non-profit Pew Internet Project is provided by The Pew Charitable Trusts.


The full report is available for download at:
http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/204/report_display.asp