Study: The Internet is an Asian/American medium

English-speaking Asian/Americans are more likely to have technical devices than other ethnic groups.

ENGLISH-SPEAKING Asians have flocked to the Internet like no other group of people, according to a new PEW report.

The popular narrative says that Euro/Americans "lead in technology adoption while other racial or ethnic groups struggle to keep up," says the analysis. However, the PEW study says English-speaking Asians are more adept in the new technology that exceeds the rest of the population, including whites.

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.

RELEASE: Almost everything about Asian/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 that 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. 

RELATED: AAPI social networkers make their presence felt

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.

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For more news about Asian/Americans & Pacific Islanders, read AsAm News.