Safe Internet Alliance

[This is the fourth in a series of posts featuring key points and issues discussed at Safe Internet Alliance’s event on Capitol Hill on October 20th, “Framework For A Safe Internet: Know the facts, understand the issues, shape the future.”]

Speaking on Panel 1 , titled, "The Real Online Picture: Perspectives on Users, Providers and Safety," Pew Hispanic Center Associate Director Mark Lopez spoke about the rapidly changing demographics of the US Hispanic population and what it means for Internet access. Pew considers itself a "fact tank" and regularly analyzes and gathers data; it has conducted a series of surveys with English-speaking Hispanics within the US.

Lopez said there are currently 46 million Hispanics in the United States, a population that has tripled since 1980, and one that Pew predicts will reach 130 Million by 2050. He explained that much of the early growth of the population has been driven by immigration, but this is the first decade where growth from native births will outpace immigration. So what does this mean? That Hispanics are a much younger population than other demographics. The median age for Hispanics is 26.

"When we ask Hispanics whether they have broadband, among English speakers about 60% say yes, they have broadband at home," Lopez said. "How does it compare? Well, for blacks, only 46% say the same and for whites it's 65%. Those who are college educated tend to have a broadband connection. One important trend is the use of wireless, and when you ask young Latinos about that, if they have wireless, they say yes. They're clearly communicating and using their wireless devices. In fact, Hispanics are more likely to be in wireless-only households compared to the rest of the population."

Verizon Senior Vice President Kathy Brown said that providers like hers are "the builders of these platforms on which the Internet is running. She explained that two fundamental things -- capacity and mobility -- have changed and expanded, and soon we're going to see the two come together.

In what way? Brown said in the next few months Verizon would launch LTE, a faster-than-ever mobile connection that makes streaming video on your mobile device easy.

"LTE is going to allow mobile video, so instead of watching my Notre Dame game on a text-based ESPN site, I can watch the game on my mobile device," Brown explained. "This is about to roll out within the next two months from Verizon, and then over the next three years we hope to cover the country with an LTE connection. This same standard is being moved out across the world, for instance China Mobile is rolling it out. So our Star Trek days are coming closer."

So what does this say about the safety issue?

"This is the conversation that I've been trying to have," she said. "It's fun to talk about democracy and how we can democratize the world with these devices. It's harder to talk about what are the norms of a functioning democracy. Everything we know is moving online. Everything that is good or bad, and we have yet to really work through what are the norms in this space. What are the norms for keeping people safe, for acting safely, for acting responsibly, for making sure that each of the roles in society are taken up and taken seriously in the online world?"

Verizon has been regularly reaching out to its user base and soliciting requests for what its customers would like to see with the technology.

"They're telling us that the more they use the technology, the better they feel about it, but they're nervous about how complicated it is, that it all seems a little bit mystical," she concluded. "All of this is good information for us to have to start to get solutions. That requires us to all sit together and create norms: how we are going to behave with each other, between each other, and can we start to develop a culture so that we can have a safe environment, so that we can use all of the amazing kinds of functionality that this [mobile and broadband] speed is going to give us."