Latinos trail others on Net use, presents challenges and offers opportunities
Less than one-third of Latino adults living in the US who only speak Spanish are logging onto the Internet. According to “Latinos Online,” a report from Pew Internet & American Life Project, online adoption rates are affected by levels of education and English proficiency.
Latinos comprise 14% of the U.S. adult population and about half (56%) of this growing group goes online. By comparison, 71% of non-Hispanic whites and 60% of non-Hispanic blacks use the internet.
However, when the dominant language is taken into account, Latinos are actually quite high users of the Internet - 78% of Latinos who are English-dominant and 76% of bilingual Latinos use the internet, compared with 32% of Spanish-dominant Hispanic adults.
“At this point, in most areas of the country, it is assumed that someone has access to the Internet,” said Susannah Fox, an associate director at the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
But in reality, there exist a segments of the population, those who are foreign-born, speak mostly Spanish, people without a high school degree and the elderly.
The findings present some challenges for policy makers. Rep. Joe Baca, a California Democrat who is chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus told Associated Press, “Hispanic Americans will not be able to fully pursue educational and economic opportunities if they do not enjoy access to all that is available online: job listings, loan applications, health information and academic research.”
The situation also offers business opportunities. Hispanic Americans are the fastest-growing minority group in the US and eMarketer estimated greater growth for Hispanic online ad spending (32%) than general-market online ad spending (25%) in 2006.
“Even though many Hispanic Internet users speak English, they still want advertising and online content that speaks to them in a culturally relevant way,” said eMarketer senior analyst Debra Aho Williamson. “Marketers will reach some Hispanic people by advertising on general-market sites, but they should also consider sites that are in English but are specifically aimed at the Hispanic population.”
Pew Internet used data from two surveys. The 2006 National Survey of Latinos (NSL), and the 2006 Hispanic Religion Survey, both were conducted by International Communications Research (ICR) in the summer and fall of last year. The sample size consists of 4,016 Latino adults. Surveys were conducted by phone, and respondents were able to participate in Spanish, English, or a combination of the two languages.
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