By Lee A. Daniels

The so-called digital divide in possession and use of cell phones, laptops and other such devices – which once prompted anguished predictions that black Americans would be left behind on the information superhighway – is fast narrowing.

And the fact that it is reveals something important about those Americans at and near the bottom of the socio-economic ladder:

They’re strivers, too.

The Pew Research Center released a report last week which found that blacks and English-speaking Latinos “continue to be among the most active users of the mobile web … that cellphone ownership is higher among African-Americans and Latinos than among whites … and that minority cellphone owners take advantage of a much greater range of their phones’ features compared with white mobile phone users.”

Those uses range from taking pictures to sending and receiving text messages and e-mails and instant messages, accessing the internet, watching a video and using a social networking site.

According to the report, roughly 87 percent of blacks and Latinos own a cell phone, compared with 80 percent of whites, and nearly two-thirds of the former groups are wireless internet users. Nationally, the survey found that 59 percent of all adults said they access the wireless web through laptops or cell phones.

That figure itself underscores the surging growth in the use of laptops and cell phones as the primary popular mechanism to get to the web: it was 51 percent just a year ago.  This adoption of the technology, led, not surprisingly, by the 18 to 29 age group, has increased markedly among all demographic groups, including the middle-aged.

But the report determined that blacks, Latinos and those with low incomes generally are now the speediest of all in adopting these technological devices. Aaron Smith, the author of the report for Pew Internet & American Life Project told the Washington Post that the “mobile population is becoming more diverse over time and more people are relying on their cellphones as their primary form of wireless connectivity.”

One reason for these groups’ growth in usage of mobile devices is that they are more affordable than the more elaborate computer equipment and the fees for Internet cable and DSL service that played a significant role in creating the digital divide in the first years of the Internet explosion. Some advocates believe those who are strictly limited to mobile devices remain unable to take full advantage of using the Internet to improve their socio-economic status.

Nonetheless, the growth of these groups’ use of mobile devices does make three things clear.

One is that in these days access to the devices of technology and to the Internet equals access to the mainstream of our increasingly complex and globalized society.

Secondly, it underscores the ability of technology, as it increases in sophistication and decreases in cost, to expand peoples’ access to multiple kinds of opportunity – including economic opportunity. And expanding access to economic opportunity is an essential ingredient in expanding the commitment to as well as the actual fact of democracy in America.

And finally, the findings of these consecutive Pew reports show once again that poor people and those who’ve been hitherto pushed to the margins of society understand these realities as well as anyone and are as committed as any other group to striving for success. All they need is the opportunity to do so.

Lee A. Daniels is Director of Communications for the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc., and Editor-in-Chief of TheDefendersOnline.