Culture
The Stubborn Persistence of America's Digital Divide
The quarter of households without Internet are disproportionately made up of families with less income and education.
The Census Bureau's latest data tracking internet and computer use in American homes suggest that both have become ubiquitous with impressive speed. About three-fourths of American households now boast both technologies, according to the Current Population Survey's data, collected through late 2012. That's up from 8.2 percent for computers back in 1984, and 18 percent for the Internet in 1997, when most of us who were online were dialing up to get there.
That trajectory, however, conceals the wide demographic gaps that still exist in home Internet penetration. As of 2012, the most glaring disparity isn't by race (these are individuals 3 years old and older, not households):