Over the last six years, as the Net has grown to become a true mass medium, various market research firms, academics and government entities have tried valiantly to establish even the most basic outline of who’s plugged in and who’s not.
While progress is being made, the field of Internet demographics remains a mess. We have yet to agree on some of the most basic things, such as what defines an “Internet user” (logging on once? once a month? once a day?).
Depending on who’s doing the spinning, the statistics generated thus far could support the argument that the Net is deepening social divisions, or that the Net is gradually empowering the disenfranchised.
After years of poking and prodding the digital divide, we’ve become more sophisticated in our approach. We know a lot about the correlations between Internet use and education or household income. We know about the role geography can play in deciding who gets logged on.
But when it comes to ethnicity and Net use, we don’t know much at all.
It’s much easier to talk about hard facts–education and income and high-speed infrastructure–than about cultural factors that might be responsible for disparities in Internet use.
This month, the Cultural Access Group, a research subsidiary of the marketing behemoth Access Worldwide Communications, released a report, “Ethnicity in the Electronic Age: Looking at the Internet Through Multicultural Lens,” which examined in some detail what African-American and Hispanic Net users do online and their attitudes about the medium.
The report was based on online surveys by Survey.com of 3,499 Internet users of various ethnicities.
Among the key findings on demographics and Net usage:
– While African-American Net users had, on average, lower household incomes, they were more highly educated than the general market–83 percent had some college, versus 79 percent of the general market.
– The Hispanic Internet market is overwhelmingly a family Internet market–89 percent have children at home, versus 37 percent for the general market.
– African-American and Hispanic users were significantly less likely than other users to log on at home. The high cost of access was the reason most often cited.
– Even after factoring in length of time on the Net, African-Americans and Hispanics–both veteran users and Net newcomers–were far less likely than other users to buy products online. In addition, members of these groups were much less comfortable using credit cards over the Net.
– African-Americans and Hispanics were slightly more likely than others to use the Net for online classes. They also were significantly more likely to use it for chat and other social functions.
And the key findings about attitudes about the Internet:
– Half of African-American respondents said the Internet should be censored, twice the level of Hispanics and others.
