• by Karl Greenberg , May 15, 2014

The Millennial Latina in America is living a double life. Also almost as many Latina Millennials attend college as non-Hispanic whites (NHW). And many are the first to go to college in their families. 

Stephen Palacios, executive director, head of intercultural practice at global marketing firm Added Value, which helped execute the recent People en Español’s Hispanic Opinion Tracker Study, says while about 60% of the Latino Baby Boomer generation was foreign born, nearly the same percentage of Millennial Latinas were born here. 

Palacios tells Marketing Daily that Hispanic American women between the ages of 18 and 34 choose similar media channels as non-Hispanic women. “We see a lot of very similar behaviors, for instance, around social media," he says, noting that non-Hispanic women are more engaged with Pinterest while Latinas favor Instagram. "These become statistically significant differences if you're a marketer trying to reach that particular audience." He says with Facebook there is parity between the groups, while Latinas over-index for Twitter. According to Nielsen's May State of the Media report, Hispanic consumers match white and Asian viewership of Hulu and YouTube, under-indexing for Netflix.

Generally, says Palacios, there is also a similarity between Hispanic Millennial women and non-Hispanic in TV viewership and the Internet as a whole. Hispanic households are the fastest-growing TV audience, per Nielsen. The State of the Media study reported that there are 14.7 million Hispanic TV households, versus 10.9 million in 2005. By contrast there are 14.9 million African American TV viewing households now, versus 13.2 million in 2005. 

The Millennial Latina mindset is also inherently different in another critical way from their forebears and from non-Hispanics: they see themselves finding much greater professional and financial success than their parents. "They are in a position their mothers and grandmothers have never been,” says Palacios. “That explains their optimism around careers. Unlike overall Millennials, they have a strong belief that they will do better than their parents."

"Women standing on stairs" photo from Shutterstock.