What is the Digital Divide?

The digital divide refers to the gap between demographics and regions that have access to modern information and communications technology and those that don't have access. Though the term now encompasses the technical and financial ability to utilize available technology—along with access (or lack of access) to the Internet—the gap it refers to is constantly shifting with the development of technology. When the term was first used in the late 20th century, for example, it described the gap between those who had cellphone access and those who did not.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

The digital divide encompasses the technical and financial ability to utilize available technology, along with access (or lack of access) to the Internet.

Digital divides exist between developed and developing countries, urban and rural populations, young and educated versus older and less-educated individuals, and men and women.

The urban-rural divide is the single biggest factor in the digital divide.

The consequences of the digital divide include isolation, which can affect mental health; educational barriers as post-secondary education increasingly moves online; and worsening gender discrimination.

The coronavirus pandemic has exposed the differences in digital coverage in the U.S.—for example, among children forced to attend school remotely and in less affluent communities where people have struggled to get vaccination appointments.

Understanding the Digital Divide

The digital divide describes the gap between people who have access to affordable, reliable Internet service (and the skills and gadgets necessary to take advantage of that access)—and those who lack it.

This is an issue within many countries, with rural populations much more likely to be cut off from digital technologies than city residents. The divide also exists between countries and between continents. And it exists between men and women: In 2019, 55% of the global male population was using the Internet, compared to 48% of the female population.

Beyond the gaps between developed and developing countries, rural and urban populations, and men and women, there are three general types of digital divide described in the literature:

• The access divide—This is the most visible digital divide. It refers to the socioeconomic differences between people, and their impact on people's ability to afford the devices necessary to get online. In developing countries, many people have limited access to technology or the Internet and do not have the skills necessary to use it effectively.
• The use divide—This refers to the difference in the level of skills possessed by individuals. There is a generation gap when it comes to the skills necessary to use the Internet. It is also affected by the quality of education that an individual receives. Younger, educated people tend to have more skills than older, less educated individuals.
• The quality-of-use gap—This measure is a little more complicated. It refers to the different ways that people use the Internet and the fact that some people are far more able to get the information they need from it.

These gaps in connectivity and skills reflect existing differences in wealth and access to education, as well as gender discrimination. The digital divide also exacerbates these same differences by barring many people from the information necessary to break out of their current living situation.

The global digital divide

For many years, the global digital divide was seen as a consequence of economic development. As countries and individuals became richer, the common expectation was that they would purchase digital devices and infrastructure and the digital divide would close naturally.

Yet incomes have risen around the world over the past two decades, and access to digital services has remained stubbornly low in much of the developing world. In many cases, this is due to a lack of investment in Internet infrastructure—citizens may have Internet-enabled devices, but still no connection to the World Wide Web. The Internet penetration rate still varies widely among continents: In 2020, 94.6% of North Americans had internet access, compared to 39.3% of Africans.

But those statistics hide a lot of variation within countries and regions. Large countries with ocean borders tend to have much better Internet access, even when they are underdeveloped in other areas. This is why, in 2020, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations agency for information and communication technologies, started to provide statistics on landlocked developing countries and small island developing states based on aggregate statistics in the developing world.

Similarly, there are major disparities in Internet access even within highly developed countries. Many rural Americans are still without adequate Internet access, and still more lack the skills to take full advantage of the access they do have. Indeed, the most accurate predictors of the digital divide are not age or country. They are educational level and the urban-rural divide. According to recent studies, roughly 72% of people living in urban areas globally have Internet access in their homes, compared to less than 40% of those who live in rural areas.

Some analysts fear that, instead of narrowing, the digital divide is getting wider. In addition, some questionable business practices appear to be widening the gap even within developed nations: The ongoing debates about net neutrality and versioning can be seen as issues about equitable access to the digital world.

Consequences of the Digital Divide

Until quite recently, access to the Internet was seen as a luxury, and disparities in digital access were seen in largely the same terms. However, there is now widespread consensus that technological discrimination is a form of social exclusion because it takes essential resources for wealth development away from certain citizens.

This is most visible when one looks at the balance of the world economy, and particularly at the rapid growth in the number of jobs that require digital access and skills. In the U.S., for instance, nearly half of all jobs in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) are in computing. In 2020, there were more than a million unfilled computer science positions. Lack of access to learning these skills is a barrier to these jobs and the income that comes with them.

You don’t have to aspire to a career in tech to be affected by the digital divide, however. The impacts of the phenomenon reach many people, in several important ways:

• Lack of communication and isolation—The COVID-19 pandemic has brought into sharp focus the isolation that people without Internet access or skills can quickly experience. This can have serious knock-on effects—from not being able to secure appointments for vaccination against the coronavirus to limiting individuals' job prospects and affecting their mental health.
• Barriers to education—As education is increasingly delivered online, those without the resources to access the Internet, including school kids limited to remote learning during the pandemic, can be cut off from opportunities to develop their skills. As a result, children may have educational gaps, and adults may miss out on job opportunities or be unable to gain the basic skills necessary to contribute to their community.
• Worsening gender discrimination—As noted above, the digital divide also exacerbates many existing forms of discrimination. One of the most widespread is gender discrimination. Women who lack equal access to the Internet are unable to gain an education or information that could help them challenge (and have a better chance of raising) their status.

As the world becomes increasingly dependent on digital technologies, these consequences are likely to become more serious and widespread. It is incumbent upon societies to address the digital divide in a holistic way that recognizes its many aspects and negative outcomes.

Bridging the Digital Divide

In recent years, programs have been launched that aim to combat particular aspects of the digital divide. Many of these are being coordinated at the highest level, including within the U.N.'s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) , which allows individual countries to coordinate their activities toward ending digital discrimination.

Within the developed world, some analysts point to successful 20th-century programs that lifted millions of people out of poverty. One commonly mentioned example is the Rural Electrification Act during the Great Depression, which stands as an example of how the government can help provide technology to underserved areas that private companies don't consider profitable enough to include in their networks.

In addition, the following specific programs have been launched in the past few years to address other aspects of the digital divide:

• The Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI)—aims to reduce the cost of broadband Internet in specific areas in the world.
• One Laptop per Child (OLPC)—provides very low-cost laptops to children around the globe and offers online educational programs that help them to develop digital skills.
• Starlink—provides high-speed Internet and global coverage at affordable prices via satellites it has launched into space.

Many countries now also run digital literacy programs aimed at teaching both adults and children the skills necessary to breach the digital divide.

References

Taylor, K. (2021). Digital divide. Retrieved from Digital Divide Definition (investopedia.com)

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What Does Digital Divide Mean?

The digital divide refers to the difference between people who have easy access to the latest and most modern communication and information technology and those who do not. In recent times, internet access is increasingly seen as the primary advantage that many technologies can grant in that it represents a staggering store of knowledge and resources. In this sense, the term now generally refers to those who have access to internet and those who do not.

The digital divide was once used to describe different rates of technology adoption by different groups and included old communication technology such as telephone and television.

Today, the digital divide may be shrinking as cheaper mobile devices proliferate and network coverage improves worldwide.

References

Techopedia. (2021). Digital divide. Retrieved from What is the Digital Divide? - Definition from Techopedia

School Districts Are Going Into Debt To Keep Up With Technology

"In Silicon Valley, cash-strapped schools are selling bonds to buy student laptops"

"This story about school debt is part of the series Districts in Debt, which examines the hidden financial pressures challenging American schools."

In a combined biology/literature class, students at James Lick High School complete assignments using school-supplied Chromebooks. Amadou Diallo for The Hechinger Report

SAN JOSE, Calif. — At James Lick High School the slate-gray Chromebooks are ubiquitous. Rolling cabinets stocked with dozens of the laptops sit in classrooms where teachers assign them to students for everything from researching hereditary DNA to writing essays. In this majority-Latino school of 1,100 students, 84 percent of whom qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a federal measure of poverty, school principal David Porter says making the devices readily available is a significant part of an effort to develop digital literacy for students who might otherwise be left behind.

Nationwide, one out of four teenagers from low-income households lacks access to a home computer and, overall, Latino students have less access than their black and white peers, according to a 2018 survey by the Pew Research Center. “We’re doing a disservice if we’re not teaching the next generation how to use technology. Students being able to access it is critical,” Porter says.

Using computers and online resources in the classroom is part of a growing trend in education. What’s unusual about James Lick’s Chromebook program isn’t the laptops themselves, but how they were paid for. In this school on the eastern edge of Silicon Valley, just a 20-minute drive from Google’s Mountain View headquarters, the district has put these laptops into students’ hands by going into debt, authorizing a $16.2 million sale of general-obligation bonds intended almost exclusively for the laptop purchases.

It’s part of an emerging shift in how schools are thinking about paying for technology, one that city and county officials say is necessary because of inadequate state funding and a highly decentralized education system that leaves smaller, less affluent districts with few other options. Yet it’s an approach that some observers say not only violates the principle of taxpayer-financed debt, but exacerbates inequities for schools in communities lacking the municipal wealth of their higher-income counterparts.

Bonds have been a long-standing source of revenue for public education. School districts sell the bonds to investors for an immediate influx of cash, with an agreement to pay back the money to bond holders over an extended period of time, commonly 20 to 30 years, with interest. Traditionally, bonds have been used to pay for capital assets that hold their value for decades. Issuing a 30-year bond to finance a new school building makes sense, says Ross Rubenstein, a professor at Georgia State University who specializes in public finance and education policy.

Using long-term debt to pay for technology that may be obsolete in a couple of years, he says, is “like taking out a mortgage to buy groceries.” Yet that is precisely what school districts across the country, including some in California, Texas, Minnesota and Kansas, have done in a desperate push to get technology into classrooms.

“One of the fundamental ideas behind debt is you want to try and match the life of what you’re purchasing to the life of the debt,” Rubenstein says.

Related: School districts’ uphill battle to get good deals on ed tech

In 2008, the San Diego Unified School District won voter approval for $2.1 billion in bond sales. While the majority of that money was for school maintenance and construction, the district allocated some of those funds for technology, buying more than 21,000 iPads. With bond payments stretching out as far as 40 years, it’s been estimated that some of these $400 iPads may ultimately cost the district more than $4,000 each.

"Using long-term bonds for tech are “like taking out a mortgage to buy groceries,”

Ross Rubenstein, a professor at Georgia State University.

An attempt by the Los Angeles Unified School District to use a long-term bond program to buy student iPads in 2013 resulted in not only high costs for the devices, but also separate SEC and FBI investigations into the legality of the bond spending and possible corruption in the vendor bidding process.

Yet, the 2014 bond sale used to buy Chromebooks for James Lick and the rest of the East Side Union High School District schools has a much different structure. Designed exclusively for technology purchases, these bonds have much shorter payment terms. And because the laptops will obviously need to be replaced every few years, this voter-approved bond measure authorized a recurring series of short-term bond sales — future offerings commence after current obligations are paid off — the last of which will come due in 2035. This structure provides for future financial stability in a fiscally responsible manner, according to district superintendent Chris Funk.

During a free period, Juan Negrete, a 17-year-old senior at Yerba Buena High School, works on an assignment using a school-supplied Chromebook.

During a free period, Juan Negrete, a 17-year-old senior at Yerba Buena High School, works on an assignment using a school-supplied Chromebook. Amadou Diallo for The Hechinger Report

By 2014 the district had won approval for $116 million in short-term bonds sales, including the $16.2 million for the Chromebooks, software licenses and the infrastructure needed to maintain them.

“In a traditional long-term bond the interest would be close to $100 million,” Funk says. “The way we’re doing it dropped the interest down to like $25 million because we’re paying off the debt every 4 to 5 years. That gives a school district like ours a source of revenue for the next 20 years that we can rely on for technology.”

Finance experts agree that school bonds offer substantial savings over most other types of borrowing, given that bonds are backed by a reliable source of funds: property taxes.

“There is a lower cost in using short-term debt rather than going out and getting a high-interest lease with a [laptop] vendor, for example,” says Bart Hildreth, a professor at Georgia State University who studies municipal finances. But bonds are not free money, he cautions. “The bond transaction itself has up-front costs. When you issue debt you have to get a bond rating, get a lawyer, investment banker, broker dealers and prepare the official statement.”

Borrowing that $16.2 million dollars for the Chromebooks cost the East Side Union district an additional $357,000 in these up-front costs on top of what appears to be roughly $1.7 million in interest payments, according to the bond filing.

The best option, experts say, is to pay for things like laptops with cash, not debt.

Related: The ‘dirty secret’ about educational innovation

Reference

Diallo, A. (2019). School districts are going into debt to keep up with technology. Retrieved from https://hechingerreport.org/school-districts-are-going-into-debt-to-keep-up-with-technology/