Between 2000 and 2010, the Pew Internet Project reports, the proportion of Internet users who were African American or Latino nearly doubled from 11 percent to 21 percent. Though blacks have adopted broadband use at home in significant numbers, African Americans continue to trail whites in broadband use: Fifty one percent of black adults access the Internet at home via desktop compared to 65 percent of white adults.

The lower cost of accessing the Internet on the mobile web has changed the landscape of the digital division. African Americans and Latinos are the most numerous and active users of the mobile web, according to Kathryn Zickuhr, a researcher with the Pew Internet Project at the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project. “The picture of Internet access today is completely different. It’s not a binary between ‘Yes, you have Internet access,’ or ‘No, you don’t,’” she said.

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