Latinos Love Location-Based Services

The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life recently published a study that found that only 4% of U.S. mobile users utilize location-based services like Gowalla and Foursquare. However, Latinos used these services at a much higher rate. According to the report, Latinos use these services — in both English and Spanish — at a rate of 10%, compared to 3% of whites and 5% of African-Americans.

To what can we attribute this spike in location-based usage? Are Latinos just more hip than everyone else?

Part of this is probably because age was a factor; mobile users between the ages of 18-29 used the location services at a rate of two-to-four times as much as other age groups. Latinos, as a pan-ethnic group in the U.S., are much younger than the rest of the population. Thus, the fact that young people are digging location-based services is likely a big factor in Latinos using these services more than other, less young, ethnic groups.

Also, in the Pew survey people in the middle-class and those who didn’t graduate high school had higher rates of using these services. Unfortunately, Latinos tend to drop out of high school more than whites and African-Americans, so that also explains this high usage.

¿Qué interesante, no? I personally don’t use these services, do you? What do you think about these figures?