The United States’ Computer Ownership Gap Persists

In September 2025, the U.S. Census Bureau released the 2024 American Community Survey data, offering insights into important national and state-level digital divide trends. Digitunity identified and analyzed two data points illustrating the (1) number of households without any type of computing device and (2) households that rely solely on a smartphone to go online. Together, these data points yield the statistic we call households without a large screen computer. In 2024: 

• 1 in 7.5 households in the United States do not have a large screen computer. 
• There are 17.7 million households, including:
  • 13,195,205 households solely reliant on a smartphone for their internet
  • 4,506,213 households without any type of computing device
• These 13.3 percent U.S. households do not have any type of computing device or rely only on a smartphone to access the internet