While this trend has been evolving for at least three to four years researchers are just beginning to contemplate the social and cultural implications. So, while it’s easy to conclude that “blacks and Latinos are heavy mobile users because they can’t afford desktop, laptops and other expensive devices” there is so much more to this story.

The first part in the series draws insights from Smokey Fontaine , Chief Content Officer at Interactive One and Mark Lopez, Chief Operating Officer of Terra Networks USA. These two companies have built their business model around supplying black and Latino mobile users with content. Fontaine explained that one of the reasons for the growth in mobile usage among African American and Latinos can be attributed to falling price points. “Cell phone fees,” he tells Michel, “have come down.” Adding, “that’s one of the things we’ve seen, especially cell phone fees regarding data usage.”

Lopez attributes the rise in mobile use among Latinos to realizing and enjoying the increased functionality of mobile. “We see the Latino audience really making a full utility of that mobile device, whether it’s to access the Internet, to talk or to share pictures and video,” Lopez says. For communities that may be far away from their home country or family, the mobile becomes a way of staying connected to people, places, and culture. Lopez adds, “Can that device get me closer to a family that’s far away in my home country? It definitely can. I can send video. I can send pictures through the device, some things that a few years ago, I couldn’t do with my mobile phone.”

Michel asked them if there were any downsides to the increasing mobile use? What impact, for example, is the proliferation of mobile having on youth literacy, educational achievement, etc.? (This is something that she and I talked about in more detail in the second part of the segment). Neither Fontaine nor Lopez addressed this question meaningfully. In truth, they approach mobile use from a different perspective, primarily a business one. And that makes sense if you understand that black and Latino youth are heavy users of mobile data. And it also makes sense when you consider that according to most demographic projections, America is steadily evolving into a racially and ethnically diverse nation.

Still, questions related to what mobile means and what kinds of social and behavioral shifts are in motion are important. On day two of the segment, Michel and I talked about the downsides to the rising use of mobile among young African Americans and Latinos. I suggested that for many black and Latino youth mobile provides a more autonomous internet experience. Compared to their white and Asian counterparts black and Latino youth are much more likely to be policed in the public spaces–schools and libraries—they use to access the internet. As a result, they turn to mobile as a way to gain more control over their engagement with the online world. (This is true of most young people around the world, but especially true of young people who find themselves on the social and economic margins). But this often pushes them further and further away from parents, guardians, and teachers. That is, adults who could help them navigate the digital world more effectively.

Many parents of black and Latino youth, as one young person indicates on Tell Me More, have no idea what their children are doing with their mobile phones. One of the things that we have learned is that while young people may be trendsetters when it comes to some digital media technologies when it comes to the social, ethical, and educational aspects of new media use adults are an indispensable resource. Our research has found that many poor and working class youth are growing up in homes, communities, and schools were there are few, if any, opportunities to talk about the challenges that come with being a citizen in the digital age. In many instances, these kids are left on their own to deal with issues like cyberbullying, sexting, and the privacy issues that are central parts of being young and digital today.

Some of my work is also trying to explore the creation of applications, platforms, and online experiences that empower young people to use their devices to enhance their heath, self-image, and social networks. In other words, to see their mobile not only as a source of entertainment but also as a tool for personal growth, life-style enrichment, and social engagement.

You can hear the first part of the Tell Me More segment on the digital divide here. You can listen to the second part here.

Follow The Young and the Digital on Twitter @scraigwatkins.

I addressed the shifting contours of the digital divide in an earlier post (see, Changing the Conversation: Rethinking America’s Digital Divide) but the data continues to suggest that young African Americans and Latinos have thoroughly embraced mobile phones and the mobile web. There are several reasons for this but let me note two in particular. First, we know that black and Latino youth are much more likely than their white and Asian counterparts to grow up in households without broadband internet.

A 2009 report by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) titled, “Digital Nation: 21st Century America’s Progress Toward Universal Broadband Internet Access,” found that broadband households tend to be younger, white or Asian, highly-educated, married, and with higher incomes. Conversely, households without broadband tend to be older, black or Latino, less educated, low incomes, and under employed. Here are reasons given by the latter households for not having broadband.

The primary reasons are “don’t need/not interested” and “too expensive.” In all likelihood black and Latino kids live in homes that can not afford the internet versus homes that are simply not interested. When you consider the fact that black and Latino households have been hit especially hard by the economic recession, broadband internet service may be viewed as a luxury rather than a necessity.

A second factor that explains the rush to mobile among black and Latino youth is that much of teen culture and social life, in general, has shifted to the mobile media space. According to Amanda Lenhart of the Pew Internet & American Life Project 75% of 12-17 year-olds own a mobile phone. In their report Teens and Mobile Phones Lenhart and her colleagues also report that girls (77%) and boys (74%) are relatively equal in terms of phone ownership. There is a small degree of disparity in terms of race and ethnicity with 78% of whites, 75% of blacks, and 68% of Latinos (that includes both English-and-Spanish speaking) owning mobile phones. To the extent that black and Latino youth live disproportionately in homes without broadband the opportunities to experience the kinds of social media activities they prefer from a home computer are not great. The mobile, in this environment, as I told Omar has become the “default gateway” to the online world for many black and Latino teens.

What do we know about the mobile lives of black and Latino youth? Much of the evidence suggests that in many instances they are not signing up for long-term contracts. Rather, they are opting to use pre-paid carriers. This reflects a number of factors including, for example, intermittent employment, a limited social network, and distinct circumstances and motivations for using mobile technology.

Whatever the reasons there is a growing effort to service tech users in low income households with affordable mobile devices, rate plans, and services, according to some of the industry people I have been speaking with. Recently, I shared an interesting conversation with Omar Gallaga, the technology reporter for the Austin American Statesman. Omar was working on a piece about the digital divide titled, Can Mobile Phones Narrow the Digital Divide? Omar reports that some of the more established carriers like At&T, Verizon, and Sprint are beginning to offer pre-paid packages or lower rate data plans. Why?

They have likely seen the reports that show the enormous amount of data black and Latino youth are using via their mobile. In a recent conversation with a VP from a mobile carrier the data generated by her company regarding the use of mobile by black and Latino youth was stunning. Another industry person acknowledged that his company was rethinking its entire mobile strategy based on the data use trends that they were viewing. Much of the data consistently acknowledges that black and Latino youth are extraordinarily active when it comes to using their mobile phones to social network with their peers, play games, listen to music, and watch video.

There is a lot to learn about the use of mobile media technologies by young people on the social and economic margins. We are beginning to get a portrait of the networked lives of black youth and Latino youth. The more interesting questions at this point are primarily sociological. How is their new media ecology evolving? How have they embraced the mobile phone as the hub of their social, informational, and cultural life? What kinds of mobile experiences are they afforded via the carriers who now see them as a viable market? What are the social, educational, and cultural implications of their engagement with mobile?

We will be offering our own observations and insights related to these questions in the forthcoming weeks and months.

Follow The Young and the Digital on Twitter @ scraigwatkins.

In a follow-up to a recent set of events I did an interview with the MacArthur Foundation Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning. Here’s an excerpt.

As the digital divide closes, thanks in no small part to mobile media, the question is no longer who’s using digital media, but how. Are African American youth engaging with digital in dynamic ways that will help them develop useful skills and greater capabilities?

You can read the full feature story here.

Another story on the Spotlight blog related to my research and a collaboration between the UNCF and MacArthur is here

Also, a great summary of MacArthur’s successful Digital Media and Learning conference held in San Diego can be read here.

Follow The Young and the Digital on Twitter @ scraigwatkins.

Whereas 30% of white households were accessing the internet only about 13% of Latino and 11% of black households had home internet access. That gap established the framework for what we know as the digital divide, the rise of the “technology rich” and the “technology poor.” Consequently, as we entered the new millennium the debate about technology and social inequality was focused squarely on the “access gap.”

Fast forward to today and profound shifts in the social and digital media landscape are apparent. Black and Latino kids are going online from a vast array of places–school, libraries, community tech centers, and home. Data from a variety of sources confirms that we have shifted from the “access gap” to what Henry Jenkins and others describe as the “participation gap.” What is the participation gap? Well, it’s a reference to the fact that as a more diverse population joins the digital world how do we begin to understand the different skills, interests, ethics, and cultures that produce different new media ecologies, literacies, and modes of participation in digital media culture?

Even though the access gap has closed in some corners of the digital world (though certainly not all; a huge age gap still persists) race, class, education, geography, and economics continue to matter in the digital world. In my presentations I have focused specifically on how African American and Latino youth, through sheer determination and innovation, are remaking the participation gap. Twelve years ago young blacks and Latinos hardly figured in the conversations about young technology users. The data today strongly suggests that they may in fact be leading the digital transition.

Here are a few of the points that I’ve been addressing in my public talks.

1. In 1999, when the Kaiser Family Foundation released its first national study investigating the media behaviors of 8-18-year-olds they found that black and Latinos were significantly less likely to go online from home than their white counterparts. Moreover, young whites spent more time online than black or Latino youth.

2. Ten years later the media environments of white, black, and Latino youth has changed significantly. In their 2010 report Kaiser finds that the amount of time young people spend using media throughout the day has risen sharply, especially among blacks and Latinos. When you combine all media used, multitasking and otherwise, Hispanic youth spend about 13.0 hours a day with media. Black youth spend just about as much, 12:59 hours whereas white youth spend 8.36 hours. Even more interesting: on a typical day young Latinos (1:49 hours) and blacks (1:24) are spending more time online than their white counterparts (1:17).

3. When it comes to mobile media the gap is even wider. According to Kaiser, black and Latino youth are the heaviest consumers of media content via the cell phone. Black youth spend the most time using their phones for music, games, and videos: almost an hour and a half (1:28), compared to 1:04 for Hispanics and 26 minutes among white youth.

4. Since 2004-05 we have learned from Amanda Lenhart, an analyst from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, that black and Latino youth are just as likely as young whites to create a social network profile. There is growing evidence that young blacks and Latinos are spending more time on social sites like MySpace and even Facebook and Twitter than young whites.

5. In our recent work with a group of black and Latino teens they talk passionately about the role of mobile phones in their lives. The mobile, quite simply, is the hub of their social and informational world. That’s true of a growing number of all young people. But African Americans, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, are more likely than their white or Latino counterparts to go online via a mobile phone than a desktop or laptop computer. They are emerging as early adopters of the mobile web.

When I spoke with Amanda at the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning conference this past weekend she said that Pew would soon be releasing results that further support my observations. We all know that mobile is the future. By 2020, according to one Future of the Net report, the majority of Americans will be accessing the internet via a mobile device. But the future is now for some internet users, especially for young African Americans.

Finally, in our research with black teenagers they offer a host of reasons for why they prefer going online from their mobile phones. Some believe it’s a more affordable on ramp to the online world. Some believe it is more reliable, that is, no need to worry about the old or broken down computers they encounter at school or at home. The main reason: their mobile device offers a more empowered online experience. Many schools have all but made going online a painful experience. Students can’t do the things they want to do–communicate with their peers, access Facebook, or “mess around” with technology. Libraries place time and content restrictions on what young people can do online. The mobile web, in short, limits the ability of adults to control what kids do online. This can be liberating and, at times, limiting.

Truth is, we do not know a lot about what young people are doing online with their mobile phones. What are the perils when young people’s participation in new media communities drifts further away from adults? Are teens sexting? What kinds of new literacies are they engaged in? Is the mobile web used principally to play games, listen to music, and watch videos? Or is it also used as an educational and informational resource? These are just some of the kinds of questions that need to be answered.

We will continue to update you from the field as we strive to learn more about how black and Latino youth are remaking the participation gap and, along the way, changing the conversations about technology and social inequality.

Generational Shifts
When I talk about my research with various organizations and colleagues around the world I am often asked: how does the use of social media change over time? In other words, what would a longitudinal study of social media behaviors reveal about the complex ways we participate in digital media culture? Recently, The New York Times posted an interesting piece, The Children of Cyberspace: Old Fogies by Their 20s that underscores the mini-generational gaps that make it difficult to talk in very broad terms about youth and digital media. Lee Rainie, the director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, told the Times, “People two, three or four years apart are having completely different experiences with technology.”

The article points out that the digital media behaviors of 22-year old college students are very different than eighteen year old college students. It speaks to how quickly engagement with digital media evolves. We’ve been tracking this in our own research. Three years ago when we started collecting survey data from college age persons about their use of social network sites we asked this question: “How often do you check social network sites?” When we launched a new national survey two months ago (November 2009) we realized that the question–just three years old–appears outdated.

The question assumes that there are times in the day when young collegians are not connected, not updating their status, or not looking out for new content posted, for example, in their Facebook news feed. Young people are “always on,” that is to say, always connected to a device and their peers no matter if they are at school, work, the gym, bar, or even while driving. They are always connecting, sharing, and communicating. Today, the more relevant question might very well be, “when are you not on a social media platform?”

The survey project that we recently launched is designed to probe how the use of social media changes in a relatively short window of time. We know from our previous research that teens use of social media varies significantly from the college students usage of social media. Our latest project is designed to produce an evidenced-based portrait that compares and contrasts the social media practices of current college students with recent college grads. One of our hypothesis is that the motivation for using social media is marked, in large measure, by the various stages of the life-cycle. We believe that the intensity and types of participation in the social media world are constantly evolving in relation to external factors like work, family, and geographical mobility.

So, are college grads more or less likely than current college students to share personal information about themselves in Facebook? Do college grads find themselves using social media more or less often than college students? And does the composition of their network change in the transition from college to the professional world? These are just some of the questions that our research is poised to address in an effort to further illuminate the mini-generational distinctions that are part of social media world.

We will be posting some preliminary results and data points from the survey in the next few weeks.

Diversity and the Digital Media Participation Gap

In February, the MacArthur Foundation and the Digital Media and Learning Hub at the University of California, Irvine are hosting The Digital Media and Learning Conference. The theme for the inaugural event to be held in La Jolla, California is, Diversifying Participation.

Fifteen years ago the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) released the now famous report Falling Through the Net: A Survey of the “Have Nots” in Rural and Urban America. That report along with additional research from scholars, community activists, and policy makers established the framework for what is now known as the digital divide, a reference to the rise of the technology rich and the technology poor. The original digital divide narrative focused primarily on who did and did not have access to computers and the Internet. The belief, of course, was that those on the digital margins, often the poor, the rural, and less educated would fall farther behind their more affluent, suburban, and educated counterparts.

It did not take long for researchers to expand the focus of digital media and diversity beyond the question of access. More recently researchers have explored what is typically referred to as the participation gap– a recognition that as a more diverse population engages the digital media world they bring different skills, competencies, and interests to their online experiences. As the organizers of the Diversifying Participation conference write in their announcement, “Young people have differential access to online experiences, practices, and tools and this has a consequence in their developing sense of their own identities and their place in the world.” Trying to identify, document, and comprehend these different experiences and practices and what they mean for achieving a more equitable digital world represents an exciting stage of research.

One of the assumptions that accompanied the original digital divide narrative is that black, Latino, and working class communities, for example, were not engaged with social and mobile media technologies. The data that we have been collecting demonstrates just how wrongheaded that assumption is. Still, even as black and Latino youth are using technology their participation in the digital media world produces notable perils and possibilities.

I’m giving one of the keynote addresses for the Digital Media and Learning and Learning Conference. My presentation considers how the social media practices of black and Latino youth compel us to rethink the participation gap and the emergent issues surrounding their immersion in the digital world. I’ll also be talking about these issues at conferences at Ohio St. University, a community organization in Washington DC, and another MacArthur funded event at Morehouse College in Atlanta.

As these and other events approach I will be sharing my observations and presentations on this website.