[Digital Brief] Digital Divide Persists Even as Lower-income Americans Make Gains in Tech Adoption (Pew)

March 23, 2017

The digital divides still exist.  A Pew Recearch Center study,"Digital divide persists even as lower-income Americans make gains in tech adoption, shows how the digital lives of lower- and higher-income Americans remain markedly different. Read more

Roughly three-in-ten adults with household incomes below $30,000 a year don’t own a smartphone. Nearly half don’t have home broadband services or a traditional computer. And a majority of lower-income Americans are not tablet owners. By comparison, many of these devices are nearly ubiquitous among adults from households earning $100,000 or more a year.

And with fewer options for online access at their disposal, many lower-income Americans are relying more on smartphones. In 2016, one-fifth of adults living in households earning less than $30,000 a year were “smartphone-only” internet users – meaning they owned a smartphone but did not have broadband internet at home. This represents an increase from 12% in 2013. In contrast, only 4% of those living in households earning $100,000 or more fell into this category in either year. 

Growing share of low-income Americans are smartphone-online internet users
Pew Research Center