July 25, 2009
The racial divide in Internet devices
A Pew Internet report says that while 56% of Americans have accessed the Internet wirelessly, there’s a stark racial divide in the devices we use. About half of the African-American and English-speaking Hispanic population accesses the Net through cellphones and other handheld devices, but only 28% of white Americans have ever done so.
Three bullet points quoted from the report:
* 48% of Africans Americans have at one time used their mobile device to access the internet for information, emailing, or instant-messaging, half again the national average of 32%.
* 29% of African Americans use the internet on their handheld on an average day, also about half again the national average of 19%.
* Compared with 2007, when 12% of African Americans used the internet on their mobile on the average day, use of the mobile internet is up by 141%.
We can read this in many different ways:
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Mobiles are helping to end the digital racial divide
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Mobiles are extending the digital racial divide by providing second-class Net access to African Americans
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For a far greater percentage of African Americans than white Americans, the Net is less generative and participatory
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We’d better make sure that the carriers become device independent and Net neutral
