Media Life Magazine

Media Life Magazine: U.S. Hispanics wield an increasing amount of spending power and have become a desirable group to advertisers, but one area where they continue to lag is the internet. A smaller percentage of Latinos go online than any other ethnic group, according to a new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. The study finds that only 56 percent of U.S. adult Latinos go online, compared with 60 percent of blacks and 71 percent of whites. They are especially far behind in broadband connections, with 29 percent of Latinos using high speed compared with 43 percent of whites. At the same time, there are major differences between different Hispanic demographic groups. Nearly 80 percent of English-speaking Latinos and 76 percent of bilingual Latinos use the web compared with just 29 percent of Spanish-dominant Latinos. Education and economic factors appear to be the biggest indicator of who’s going online. Susannah Fox, associate director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project and co-author of the report, talks to Media Life about why so many immigrants are not online, what role education plays, and why Mexicans have lower web usage.