African-American Internet Use Climbs

The numbers are likely to grow for decades.
The percentage of African-Americans who use the Internet increased to 64% as of December 2008, up from 56% in December 2007, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project. In comparison, Internet users represented 74% of the total US population in December 2008, dipping slightly from 75% in December 2007.

The proportion of African-Americans who use the Internet increased by 22 percentage points from December 2000 to December 2008, compared with 21 percentage points for the total US population.


African-Americans accounted for 11% of all US Internet users as of November 2008, according to Harris Interactive. That compares with the 12% of US Internet users who were Hispanic and 74% who were non-Hispanic whites.


The absolute numbers behind those percentages are set to change. The US Census Bureau projects that non-Hispanic whites will account for 46% of the population in 2050, while Hispanics will constitute 30% and African-Americans will make up 15%.

Based on these projections, and on the Census Bureau’s estimate of 439 million total Americans in 2050, there will be 65.7 million African-Americans, 132.8 million Hispanics, 40.6 million Asian-Americans and 203.3 million non-Hispanic whites.

If the 2050 Internet penetration rate is estimated at 75% (probably quite low), this means there will be more than 49 million African-Americans online that year, nearly double the estimated 26 million in 2008.