O.C. Internet Use High, but Latinos Lagging

Orange County residents are more avid computer and Internet users than Californians on the whole, with nearly half gathering news and medical information online and 40% making purchases, according to a UC Irvine survey released Monday.

But Latinos in the county are less likely than others to go online or even own computers, a digital divide that reflects the disparity between incomes as well as regions, according to the annual Orange County Survey.

Residents in Irvine, Newport Beach and the rest of South County are much more likely to go online to shop, get information and look for a job than those in older, established North County.

“Orange County in many ways is ahead of the state, which is ahead of the nation in computer and Internet use,” said UC Irvine professor Mark Baldassare, who conducted the 19th Orange County Annual Survey.

The poll found that 62% of the respondents are frequent computer users and that 54% use the Internet often. Statewide, 57% are regular computer users and 47% are frequent on the Internet, according to a February survey by the Public Policy Institute of California.

The UC Irvine survey is a measure of the political, social and economic attitudes of Orange County residents. This year’s was the first to seek information about computer use.

Baldassare said the findings about the so-called digital divide between the county’s Latinos and the non-Hispanic white population is “dramatic.”

Latinos are about half as likely to use the Internet or to have a home computer, the study found. The survey did not have a large enough sample base of African-Americans or Asians to provide separate statistics for those groups, Baldassare said.

The majority of Latinos--60%--said they do not have a home computer, compared with 30% of non-Hispanic whites. About 56% said they use computers at home, work or school, compared to 81% of other whites; and 40% surf the Internet, compared to 71% of non-Hispanic whites.

The gap between the two groups “sets up a situation where people have widely different access to knowledge and information, and all the economic opportunities that [they] bring today,” Baldassare said.

“In the long run, this is important in terms of adding to what already are economic and social inequalities in the county,” he said. “In the short run, it means that we’re going to have difficulties filling positions in local high-tech companies, even though many Latinos live very close to the high-tech industries going up in Orange County today.

“They can’t be a part of the wonderful opportunities being developed, because they don’t have the knowledge and skills to participate,” he said.

The divide between North and South County residents is also pronounced.

The survey found, for instance, that 61% of South County respondents used the Internet to get news, compared with 44% of those in the North.

Frequent Internet use among South County residents is at 63%, while only 50% of those in North County are avid Internet users. About 48% of South County residents shop on line, compared to 36% of those to the North. Countywide, 40% of Internet users have made on-line purchases.

“From an industry point of view, this points to some tremendous opportunities in terms of markets that are being missed right in our own neighborhood,” Baldassare said. “There is just incredible potential to reach out to communities that are being underserved.”

While the UC Irvine survey portrays a stark ethnic and geographic contrasts, the greatest determinant of computer and Internet use may well be income, not race or ethnicity.

The UC Irvine survey found that 76% of those earning $36,000 or more are frequent computer users, compared to 40% of those who earn less than that. And 68% of those with higher incomes use the Internet frequently, compared to 29% of those who earn less.

In a mid-June report, market research company Jupiter Communications said the largest gap among computer and Internet users exists between households with high incomes and those with low incomes.

Jupiter also predicts that Internet use among three main minority groups nationwide will grow at double-digit rates annually for the next five years. By the end of this year, it said, 4.6 million African-American households will be online, compared with 3.8 million Latino households, and 2.2 million Asian-American households.