Are Spanish-dominant Hispanics less digitally engaged?

Many marketers have the assumption that Spanish-dominant and even bilingual Hispanics are not online or at least not as much as English-dominant Hispanics or the general U.S. population. Portada reports that a study published by Ipsos MediaCT indicates this is not the case. In fact, if anything, Spanish-dominant Hispanics are more digitally engaged than their English-dominant and general market counterparts.

These are the most outstanding results of the study:

• Digital Hispanics across the language spectrum are in fact a digitally dynamic population who, much like their non-Hispanic counterparts, live in a multi-tasking, multi-screen, multi-content day.
• Digital Hispanics extend their average 24-hour day into a 31-hour day, largely through multi-tasking with media. In fact, Digital Hispanics are more likely than the total US online population to extend their average day by multi-tasking with media. 
• Bilingual and Spanish Dominant Digital Hispanics actively leverage today’s digital technology, particularly Social Media, to not only communicate with their social spheres in the U.S., but to also regularly connect to their friends and families in their home countries.
• As you move along the language usage spectrum, you see that bilinguals, but in particular Spanish Dominants are actively using social networks to extend and enhance their communication with friends and family here and in their home countries.
• Half of Digital Hispanic video viewers utilize 2 screens for their video viewing, while nearly 10 percent utilize three screens. 

The lion share of video viewing occurs with Live Television. But Digital Hispanics utilize alternative television and video viewing channels slightly more than do those in the total US online population. Digital Hispanic’s online video share is 50% more than that of the total US Online Population.

Source: Portada, Are Spanish-dominant Hispanics less digitally engaged? No, says Ipsos study, January 25, 2012.