People have grown used to the idea of Twitter as America's stream of consciousness, but a new study suggests that the fast-growing microblogging service is also becoming a kind of digital melting pot for U.S. adults.

A survey released today by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project says that while 8 percent of Americans who log onto the Internet use Twitter, a much higher share of Internet-connected Latinos and blacks are using the service than whites. The proximity of your neighbor also seems to have much to say about whether you might communicate with him or her in Twitter's 140-character bursts, with the Pew survey finding city dwellers are more than twice as likely to use the service than Americans who live in rural areas.

Although policymakers and other experts have long been concerned about a "digital divide" between whites
and minorities, with whites much more likely than minority households to have a broadband Internet connection, the rise of Internet-connected smartphones and social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook may be helping to ease that gap.


"The findings around people of color are really interesting and match really well with a lot of the other work we have done recently about how African-Americans and Latinos are very engaged in social media, and how they are very active in the mobile space," said Aaron Smith, who co-authored the report for Pew.

The Pew survey, based on telephone and cell phone interviews with more than 2,200 adult Internet users in English and Spanish in November, found that 18 percent of Hispanic Internet users and 13 percent of black Internet users are using Twitter. That compares with 5 percent of Internet-using whites who use the service.

Twitter has mushroomed to more than 175 million users -- about two-thirds of its members are outside the United States -- moving in the past two years from techie fad to ubiquitous centerpiece of corporate marketing departments.

Pew found that women were slightly more likely to use Twitter than men (10 percent of women versus 7 percent of men). The survey also found that Twitter still skews very young, with 14 percent of adults under 30 using the service, compared to just 7 percent of people in their 30s and 40s.


Age may be another reason for the popularity of Twitter among Latinos. The median age of non-Hispanic U.S. whites is 41.2 years, according to 2009 Census Bureau data. The median age of U.S. Latinos is 27.3 years.


"It is the youngest population in the United States," said Al Camarillo, a Stanford University historian who studies Chicano history and the scattering of Mexican immigrants across the country. "If one makes the assumption that these (Latino) kids are growing up as American as they are, they are also growing up with all of the same" technologies.


Smith said that though Pew doesn't know why people in small towns are so much less likely to use Twitter than people in big cities, it may have something to do with the frenetic character of urban and suburban life.

"What people are doing is using technology to maintain contact with their friends and family members," he said. "People are using technology not to withdraw from the world, but to maintain some contact with the people around them and the things they are interested in -- even when they are pressed for time, and economically stressed."


A Twitter spokeswoman said the San Francisco-based company does not do its own demographic analysis of users and does not comment on third-party data.


"That said, we think it's great to see different demographics and different people in different regions of the world organically take to Twitter," said Carolyn Penner, the spokeswoman. "We think that speaks to its universal appeal."