I came across this tidbit while doing a paper on how Latinos use social networking sites. This quote is from a press release announcing a new social networking site called BabySpotLatino.com:
A new report from Forrester Research shows U.S. Hispanics are active online social networkers. Three thousand online Hispanics were surveyed, and results showed 69% of Hispanic’s, compared to 42% of non-Hispanics, were characterized as spectators, meaning they peruse what others do, suggesting that this is a level where interactivity starts to increase. 40% of Hispanics, compared to 12% of non-Hispanics, were characterized as creators, meaning they actively pursued social networks by blogging, uploading photos and videos and creating personal web pages.
If this is true, this is a big difference in how Latinos and non-Latinos use the web. Assuming these numbers are valid, why do Latinos engage in more social activity online than non-Latinos? I’d guess that much of it has to do with differing notions of family, individualism and the role of friendship networks. Help me unpack this intellectual suitcase 🙂
Comments 2
genderkid — January 27, 2009
Maybe US Hispanics use these networks to communicate with their friends & family abroad; if so, then the numbers would be similar among any recently immigrated community (I'm assuming the US Latino community is still young, so ties to the homeland should still be strong).
But the cultural factor is probably really important. I'm Latin --living in my homeland-- and it's really noticeable how much more family-centered Latin families are, compared with the US. However, since I see my family often, I don't have to follow them online.
Txt Latino — October 17, 2009
As mentioned above, the level of Hispanics/Latinos actively involved in online social networking is growing every day. Another area of social networking that is seeing major growth are the text messaging social networks. This could be because text messaging is very cost effective, mobile, real time and now available to other countries.
Send us an email if you have any questions on text messaging social networks.