Asian Americans top users of Internet

By Anick Jesdanun
Associated Press

NEW YORK — Asian Americans who speak English are among the heaviest users of the Internet, having integrated it into their daily lives more than any other ethnic or racial group, a survey released yesterday finds.

The telephone survey of English-speaking American adults, conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, found that 75 percent of English-speaking Asian American adults have used the Internet.

Seventy percent go online on a typical day, compared with 58 percent for whites, 48 percent for English-speaking Hispanics and 39 percent of blacks.

Nearly 40 percent of the Asian group spend at least two hours on the Web on days they are online, and 15 percent spend at least four hours. Eighty percent have been online for more than two years.

The Asian American online population is more heavily male — 58 percent vs. 50 percent for whites and Hispanics and 43 percent for blacks.

It is also younger. Nearly two-thirds of the adult Asian American users are ages 18 to 34. For all users, only 41 percent are in that age group.

Asian American users are more likely than other groups to use the Internet to get news; look up financial, travel and political information; and conduct school or work research.

Because the survey was conducted in English, the tallies do not reflect Internet use among people who speak other languages only.

The study was based on interviews with 26,094 adults, including 13,936 Internet users, conducted between March 1 and Dec. 22, 2000. The sample included 486 English-speaking Asian Americans, of whom 340 are online.

Pew used data from 2000 because it did not have enough Asian Americans this year to be statistically significant. However, it found the 2001 numbers to be consistent with trends in 2000.

The overall survey has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 1 percentage point, while results on Asian American Internet users had an error margin of plus or minus 5 percentage points.