English-speaking Asians have flocked to the internet like no other group of people, according to a new PEW report.
The PEW analysis qualifies its report by noting that they did not poll non-English-speaking Asian Americans. A 2012 PEW survey found that 63.5% of Asian Americans say they speak English “very well.”
For several years, many Asian Americans have suspected they had a larger presence on the Internet much higher than their relatively small numbers in the general populace . But until now, there hasn’t been any hard data to support this thesis.
Not surprisingly, the next group in the categories were Whites, followed by African Americans and Latino Americans.
Here are some of their findings for the English-speaking Asian Americans:
- 95% use the Internet. It is not even close. In second place, only 87% of Euro Americans use the Internet.
- 84% have broadband at home. The gap here is even wider. Only 72% of Whites have broadband.
- 91% own have a smart phone. 66% of Whites own a smart phone. When including less advanced mobile phones, Asian American usage jumped to 98%.
Researchers surmise that Asian
Americans’ tendency to have higher education and higher income contribute to higher use of high-tech devices.
Hopefully, the findings will convince PEW surveyors to include Asians in their other research about the Internet use and social media.
It kind of reminds me of the surveys PEW did in 2011 that gave the education, incomes levels, education, religion, political preference, social attitudes of African Americans and Latinos. The research group skipped Asians because we were numerically too small to get accurate data.
Such a hew and cry came from the Asian American community that PEW was forced to do a similar analysis of the Asian Americans resulting in the 2012 “The Rise of Asian Americans.”
It appears PEW has fallen into its old habits again. Several followup surveys released after this February 2016 report didn’t include Asian Americans.
(Ed Diokno writes a blog :Views From The Edge: news and analysis from an Asian American perspective.)
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