Latinos haven’t traditionally had access to the latest technology, but are now experiencing a cultural turnaround as it grows cheaper and more accessible.

By Marissa Lang
Latino Reporter

Latinos are rapidly closing the gap with the rest of the country’s level of technological know-how, spurring what experts are calling a new cultural revolution.

Experts say the narrowing of the digital divide is opening a whole new world of questions about the emerging Latino market in the technological sphere.

“The digital divide, as it is traditionally defined, is narrowing and becoming less significant – especially in terms of differentiating one group over another,” said Edgar Ochoa, who served as one of the original programming directors of AOL Latino and helped to establish technopadres.com, a Web site that educates Latino parents about online and technological trends.

Latinos, a group that traditionally hasn’t had access to the latest technology because of socioeconomic factors and language barriers, are experiencing a cultural turnaround as technology grows cheaper and more accessible.

“Because social economic situations have forced many Latinos to adopt technology later than the rest of the population, they tend to be on the edge of the latest technology that’s available,” Ochoa said. “From an online perspective, incidences of Hispanics that are going onto the Internet and getting a connection in their home when dial-up was the only option were very small. But now the numbers are growing in leaps and bounds. Because they adopted it later, they adopted the latest technology.”

A 2007 Pew Internet and American Life Project study revealed that only 56 percent of the adult Latino population – which at the time made up about 14 percent of the total U.S. population – used the Internet, while 71 percent of their non-Hispanic white counterparts went online.

The report cited several socio-economic characteristics that are often intertwined, such as low levels of education and limited English proficiency, to help explain the gap in Internet use. Language and country of origin, it found, was a big factor in determining an individual’s technological familiarity.

But the issue of language is slowly dissipating in the emergence of a new tech-savvy population of Latinos.

The sudden emergence of Latinos as a strong and growing market has raised some interesting questions about the future of technology, and how language will evolve to accommodate this growing population, said Carlos Ferreyra, who also founded AOL Latino and has worked for Univision’s online department.

“The United States is becoming one of the countries with the largest contingencies of Spanish-speakers in the world,” Ferreyra said. “Add in the culture and the money the Hispanics in this country have, and they’re becoming a very great influence in the technological market.”

Ferreyra said that while many popular Web sites and companies have added a Spanish-language component or option, many new technologies have been slow to adapt to the increasing demand for multilingual platforms.

“For example, in the new iPhone, I haven’t seen too many widgets for Latinos in Spanish,” Ferreyra said. “Immigrants and Hispanics that are assimilated are not represented as they should be in the technologies they are now purchasing — that phase needs to begin.”

Share this post