Pew Research Center released the results of a major survey that asked how Americans use the Internet, about smartphone ownership, and about the digital divide. There were over 5,000 completed surveys conducted in the first half of 2025.

Home Broadband

About 78% of respondents live in a home that has a broadband subscription. That’s an interesting statistic since there have been past FCC reports that say that as many as 88% of homes have broadband. I wrote a blog once about the difficulty of counting homes in the US. It’s not obvious how to account for second homes and abandoned homes, as we’ve seen in the FCC fabric. But Pew’s results are based on the number of people and not homes. Some of the differences between Pew and FCC data would include large groups of people, like the unhoused and members of the military, who don’t live in a home.

The Pew survey shows that there is still a big difference in broadband penetration related to household incomes. 94% of those in households with an annual household income over $100,000 have a broadband subscription, while only 54% of those with household incomes under $30,000 have broadband. This highlights the essence of the still prevalent digital divide. There was a lot of hope that the federal ACP plan that provided a $30 monthly subsidy would help millions of households afford broadband, but the ACP experiment ended not long after it started.

There is also a difference depending on where people live. The broadband subscription rate is 84% in suburbs, 75% in urban areas, and 71% in rural areas.

There is also a difference by age. 87% of those between 30 and 49 have broadband, while only 70% of those over 65 have a subscription. Surprisingly, only 71% of those between 18 and 29 have broadband, which is down from 78% from a survey released in 2023, but about the same as a survey from 2021. It’s hard to know if this represents a trend, such as a migration to cellphones, or if this is a group that changes a lot based on factors like jobs and the economy.

For those who love statistics, Pew has a separate report that trends these results over time.

Smartphone Usage

According to the Pew Survey, 16% of adults are “smartphone dependent”. Meaning they rely on a smartphone for broadband access and don’t subscribe to home broadband. When added to those with a home broadband subscription, 94% of adults subscribe to some form of broadband.

Smartphone usage also varies by income, in relationships that are the opposite of home broadband subscriptions. 27% of those living in homes with incomes under $30,000 reach the Internet only through a smartphone, while only 4% of those with household incomes over $100,000 rely completely on a smartphone.

The same relationship to home broadband applies when looking at age. 27% of those between 18 and 29 only reach the Internet through a smartphone, while only 11% of those between 30 and 39 do so.

Pew notes that the percentage of those who rely on a smartphone only to reach the Internet has doubled from 8% in 2013.