Digital Divide is Shrinking for America’s Hispanic Population

Internet use among Hispanic Americans has continued to grow, according to NTIA data, narrowing a racial disparity that has existed since NTIA began tracking adoption through its Internet Use Surveys in 1998. The proportion of Hispanic Americans using the Internet has risen from 61 percent in 2013 and 66 percent in 2015 to 72 percent in 2017, NTIA data show. Although this is still less than the 80 percent of non-Hispanic Whites online in 2017, the gap has begun to narrow. Internet usage rates for Hispanics are now similar to African Americans, who have also experienced gains in Internet use in recent years. While immigrants continued to be less likely to go online than their US-born peers in 2017, the differences appear to be shrinking. Internet use among non-U.S. citizens jumped by 11 percentage points between 2013 and 2017, from 62 percent to 73 percent, and adoption among naturalized citizens climbed from 68 percent to 75 percent during this period. New NTIA analysis shows that persons born in the US to immigrant parents were nearly as likely to use the Internet as those with two US-born parents.