A Refreshing Digital Divide Rant

This last Friday, Esther J. Cepeda of www.600words.com checked in with a refreshing update on where the Digital Divide stood (or not) as regards the Hispanic Community here in the United States (which you can read in full here).

A rant "dedicated to all the people out there who are innocently laboring under the misperception that the vast majority of Hispanics in the United States are living in such crushing poverty that they are not able to access information on the Internet."

Not so, she goes on to point out:

• In a recent report called The Power of the Hispanic Consumer On-line, Scarborough Research says that the majority (54%) of Hispanics are now online.

• In fact, Internet access among Hispanics has been increasing at a faster rate than it has among total adults in the U.S - growing 13% (on a relative basis) since 2004 - from 48% in 2004 to its current penetration of 54%.  By contrast, Internet access by all consumers nationally grew 8% during the same time period. (In 2004, 64% of all consumers accessed the Internet, and this increased to 69% in 2008.)

The same Scarborough Research elaborates:

"Younger consumers are more likely to download content online. Forty-nine percent of 18-34 year-old adult Internet Users downloaded digital content in the past month, compared to 35% of the total online population. Similarly, it is no surprise that when you examine this younger demographic of Hispanics, the percentage is even higher. 51% of 18-34 year-old Hispanics downloaded digital content during the past 30 days.

"Hispanics have been taking advantage of the expansion of broadband, and their rate of adoption has mirrored that of the total U.S. population. Currently, 68% of Hispanic Internet Users have a broadband connection in their household. This grew from 13% in 2002 - an increase of more than fivefold."

Refreshing news, indeed.