New AP Poll Reveals That Black and Hispanic Millennials Are Just as Tech Savvy as Their White Counterparts

According to an Associated Press poll, Black and Hispanic Millennials are just as tech savvy as their white peers.

In a survey conducted by the Media Insight Project, 1,045 young adults from the ages of 18-34 reported their tech habits. This group which included 163 African-Americans and 162 Hispanics were the focus of the poll results.

“People of color are very wired and just as adept in using technology,” said Tom Rosenstiel, executive director of the American Press Institute, which funded the study. “If you want a subject that hasn’t been covered in the mainstream, millennials have found ways to get at that information through community sharing more than traditional ways. The way they get news is heavily influenced by topic.”

The poll suggests that old trends do not apply to this new generation. Because of the increased availability of technology and devices  like smartphones, tablets, and cheap affordable laptops people with lower economic means will have access to the technological revolution.

From the poll’s results, 41 percent of Blacks compared with 29 percent of whites and 24 percent of Hispanics will get their trending news from Facebook. The numbers show that 38 percent of Hispanics compared with 33 percent of Blacks and 20 percent of whites  will go to Youtube for information and 30 percent of Hispanics compared with 45 percent of African-Americans and 19 percent of whites will go to Instagram.

These numbers show that Black people are extremely active on a variety of social media platforms.

“Streaming music, TV or movies is the most commonly cited online activity among African-Americans, while keeping up with what their friends are doing is the most commonly cited online activity among Hispanics. For white millennials, checking and sending email was most common,” reports Glynn A. Hill for the Associated Press.

This poll was created in January and February of this year and released this month.

Chicago Could Become a Black Tech Global Headquarters

Fabian Elliot has a dream to diversify tech by turning Chicago into a tech hub for Black people. Elliot is not a native of the city and he did not visit until he started his career at Google as co-chair of the Black Googler Network that serves as Google’s Black talent reservoir.

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At 25 years old, Elliot has created Black Tech Mecca, an organization that wants to teach technology and attract more Black people to the city. In fact, Chicago is perfect for this initiative because of Techweek.

Every year the city vibes with tech experts, CEOs, entrepreneurs, innovators and dreamers that come to talk shop and network for a week. In addition to that, Chicago is home to a variety of Fortune 500 companies.

In an interview with Dnainfo.com, Elliot explains why he wanted Chicago to be this mecca. “I realized that less than 1 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs were black,” he said. “I started to question why there are not more people of color in influential positions. I started to develop a plan. If we’re not in positions of influence, I want to be a person of influence to help change that.”

Elliot goes on to say that he wanted to bridge three communities — Black, tech and global.

“I was thinking of how I could make Chicago a beacon for all three communities, and I thought I would merge them all and address my vision. I did my research and found out what was out there. I came to realize that we had all of the ingredients, someone just needed to come up with a nice recipe to bake the cake.”

Black Tech Mecca launched during the Techweek in the last week of June. Elliot’s team includes business people and tech experts Rachel Green, Nehemiah Bishop, Keith L. Gordon, Edward Wilkerson Jr. and Floyd Webb.

For more information on the initiative, check out blacktechmecca.org.

8 Major Athletes Who Are Also Huge Blerds

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Tim Duncan

The San Antonio Spurs star may be one of the biggest Blerds on the list with a professed love for the iconic nerd game Dungeons and Dragons. To take things up a notch, he is also a frequent visitor at Renaissance fairs.

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Chris Bosh

The Miami Heat baller is a huge tech lover and advocates for everyone to learn how to code. Back in 2013, he even revealed that one of his dreams off the court would be to “teach kids about coding because the possible applications are fascinating, and it’s really quite simple when you think of it.”

5 ‘Must Go’ Tech Conference Happening This Year

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The Strange Loop

The Strange Loop conference will meet in St. Louis on Sept. 24-26. The goal is to make connections with the creators and users of the coding languages, libraries, tools and techniques at the forefront of the Web industry. The prices for the conference start at $150 to $600 depending on the type of service you want.

5 Millenial Behaviors That Should be Driving Tech Innovation

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User Experiences

For any tech business to prosper, its products and services have to appeal to millennials. By 2017, the millennial generation will be the largest online audience and will have more buying power than any other generation that has come before it, including the baby boomers. Straightforward user experiences will dictate the success of websites, e-commerce stores and mobile app developers.

10 Exceptional Black Women Who Are Changing the Face of Tech

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She is the security and privacy product manager of Apple. Snyder’s parents worked as programmers and taught her the program BASIC at 5 years old. Snyder is an expert on cryptography and has worked at Mozilla, where the Web browser Firefox was developed, and Microsoft.

ory-okollohOry Okolloh

The Kenyan native was originally a Harvard-educated lawyer before turning to tech. Her company Ushahidi is a revolutionary crowd-sourcing platform that allows citizen journalists and eyewitnesses all over the world to report incidences of violence through the Web, mobile E-mail, SMS and Twitter. She currently serves as Google’s policy manager for Africa.

7 Gadgets All Young Black Techies Should Own in 2015

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EyeLock Myris

The myris is a USB-enabled iris authentication device that can connect to anything with a USB port. Users can access their personal information without the use of passwords and user names. One look is all it takes to verify your identity.

lima-2Lima Data Storage (2 TB)

The Lima Data Storage device has reinvented the way your devices store data. You can install it at home, on your smartphone, computer and tablet, and the device will display the same files, wherever you are, regardless of the device size.