---
title: "Closing the Racial Digital Divide"
description: "Nearly half of African Americans have gone online with a handheld device, helping to offset traditional lower levels of internet access among blacks."
date: "2009-08-03"
authors:
  - name: "Russell Heimlich"
    job_title: "Former web developer"
    link: "https://www.pewresearch.org/staff/russell-heimlich/"
url: "https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2009/08/03/closing-the-racial-digital-divide/"
---

# Closing the Racial Digital Divide

Historically white Americans have had greater access to the internet than have African Americans. In fact, by a 59%-to-45% margin, whites are more likely to go online using a computer on a typical day than are African Americans. But with more African Americans using mobile devices to go online the gap is closing. Fully 48% of blacks have used a mobile device at some point to access the internet, while only 28% of whites have done so. As a result, when mobile access is included, 54% of African Americans go online on the average day compared with 61% of whites; the access gap is cut in half. And growth in mobile internet access has been rapid. In 2007, only 12% of blacks used the internet on a mobile device on an average day. Now roughly three-in-ten do, an increase of 141%. [Read More](https://www.pewresearch.org/pubs/1287/wireless-internet-use-mobile-access)