Re: The Digital Divide Is Worse Than We Thoughtful
Evagret Homestead
The understanding of the world through digital representation (digiplace) and VGI is frequently carried out with the assumption that these are valid, comprehensive and useful representations of the world. A common practice throughout the literature on these issues is to mention the digital divide and, while accepting it as a social phenomenon, either ignore it for the rest of the analysis or expect that it will solve itself over time through technological diffusion. The almost deterministic belief in technological diffusion absolves the analyst from fully confronting the political implication of the divide.
However, what VGI and social media analysis reveals is that the digital divide is part of deep and growing social inequalities in Western societies. Worse still, digiplace amplifies and strengthens them.
Some respondents predicted that a larger digital divide will form. Those who pursue more-accurate information and rely on better-informed sources will separate from those who are not selective enough or who do not invest either the time or the money in doing so.
A final caveat is that there is still limited evidence on the effectiveness of online education. A critical aspect highlighted by Bettinger and Loeb (2017) is that online courses are difficult, especially for the students who are least prepared.13 Research on performance of children attending virtual charter schools confirms the importance of self-engagement and parental supervision for success with this mode of education. Also, selection into these schools (students disengaged with traditional schools enter these schools); worse inputs (teacher-to-student ratios, one-on-one instruction, etc.) than in traditional schools; and other features of these schools translated into negative effects on performance.14 Later in the report we discuss the requirements for successful online education from the perspective of teachers.
Our analysis of data from the 2017 National Assessment of Educational Progress shows that digital devices are not universally available or used at home for school-related purposes. Our findings are presented in Figure D. Specifically, 84.4% of eighth graders overall, and 76.3% of poor eighth graders have a laptop or computer, which means that about 16% of eighth graders and 25% of poor eighth graders have no desktop or laptop at home. In addition, only about half of eighth graders had experience using the internet at home frequently for homework, with a much larger share of non-poor students (56.1%) than poor students (46.4%) accustomed to using the home internet frequently for homework (a gap of 10 percentage points). (We define poor students as students who are eligible for the federal free or reduced-price lunch programs, and non-poor students as students who are ineligible for those programs.)37
A Southern Education Foundation report on class- and race-based disparities during the COVID-19 crisis finds similar disparities in access to the resources needed for online learning. It notes that nearly one in five African American children and a slightly greater share of children in low-income households have no access to the internet at home (Tinubu Ali and Herrera 2020). These disparities mirror those reported by superintendents who responded to a survey by AASA, the School Superintendents Association, in late March as schools across the country were closing down (Rogers and Ellerson Ng 2020).38 Numerous news outlets reporting on the digital divide have also noted these disparities by race and ethnicity (for example, see Kamenetz 2020b). School shutdowns and associated internet- and device-access challenges have been occurring at a time when many of the public libraries that have been a resource for families without computers or home internet access are closed due to the pandemic.
The area of digital access and divides is a complex and multifaceted issue. Like many current complex issues, digital divides do not have a single cause or linear effect, and they involve multiple dynamic variables. Furthermore, the challenges digital divides present are constantly changing as the social and economic use of technology continues to evolve.
Looking at access to internet and mobile devices alone, there are several layers of division. The geographic location of the 2.7 billion unconnected varies greatly by region: Internet penetration is 89% in Europe, over 80% in the Americas, and 70% in the Arab States, compared to 61% in Asia and 40% in Africa. Disparities in internet connectivity and use are not limited to geographic divides, but also include gaps based on gender, age, and, rural vs. urban populations. As of 2022, there are 264 million fewer women accessing the internet than men, with women 7% less likely to own a mobile phone and 16% less likely to use mobile internet than men. Younger populations are more likely to be online as well, with 75% of global youth (aged 15-24) connected to the internet, compared to 65% of the rest of the population. In 2021, the number of internet users in urban areas was double the number in rural areas. These disparities in access to internet and mobile devices are the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the complexities and inequalities that exist within other areas of the digital divide.
Global consensus will be critical, as the digital future cannot and should not be decided by governments or technology companies alone. As the digital divide between developed and developing countries increases and more technology companies emerge in developed countries, the power and leverage of developed countries to decide on the digital future will increase, leaving more and more of the perspectives and concerns of developing countries out of the conversation.
There have been and continue to be a wide array of approaches for mitigating and solving the issue of digital divides. Digital divide policy was previously dominated by a focus on increasing access to infrastructure, but recently it has expanded to include building digital skills, closing usage gaps, and strengthening social awareness of the internet.
Because this transition to virtual activities has gone well for some, it is easy to overlook the so-called digital divide that separates Canadians. However, the longer that policies are in place to require or encourage individuals to work, study, shop, and access services at a physical distance from one another the deeper the divide will become, unless policymakers act to close it.
Unsurprisingly, much of the emphasis in the months since COVID-19 has been on closing the digital divide by providing more digital tools. While distributing free tablets and subsidizing Internet connections are certainly constructive steps, such policies only bridge, rather than close, the new fault lines opened as a result of the tectonic shift of activities to the home. In assuming that more, better, and faster technologies can, in and of themselves, bridge the digital divide, the current approach risks deepening and widening the divide rather than working to permanently close it.12
A solely technological solution to closing the digital divide has been and will continue to be illusory, as we have been warned.20 Webcasts for using Zoom more effectively in and of themselves will not help Canadians balance work, family, social, and civic life, and play.
As Canada moves into its first fall and winter since the coronavirus outbreak, policymakers need to confront the fact that the pandemic has fundamentally restructured our lives by relocating many previously external employment, educational, and social activities to the home. Closing the digital divide can help Canada thrive throughout the pandemic and beyond, but doing so will require big picture thinking with contributions from all sectors of our society from farm associations to indigenous communities to social services organizations to labour unions. Now is the time for our policymakers to bring us together to close the gap.
Social media and other digital technologies like email, texting, FaceTime, etc., have been indispensable in helping us stay informed and remain connected. This pandemic would be even worse if people could not connect digitally, and indeed it is much worse for those who cannot easily do so.
As always, it is important to balance the digital with the physical. Put the phone to the side a little more often than you want to. Get some fresh air, even if it just means standing by an open window for 15 minutes. Make sure that your media diet includes something other than the news. We are going to need to be as strong and balanced as possible, physically and mentally, when we get to the other side of this.
Physically, we are more distant from one another than most of us have ever been before. However, as we check in with one another digitally, interpersonal closeness can be sustained, even at a very high level. Many of us are even becoming closer to people whom we did not previously know well, as we try to help one another cope. We are renewing and strengthening ties with those who matter most to us.
In my research, I have found that people use social digital technology to prompt face-to-face interaction, which strengthens their connections. For example, people who use digital technology are more likely to see their friends face-to-face than those who do not, and, in fact, that is typically how people plan get-togethers with one another. While planning in-person interactions is nearly impossible now, we can prepare for those times when it will not be.
As this crisis has laid bare, the digital divide truly needs to be a societal priority. Even the most impoverished and least connected among us must have media and technology access, skills and literacy to participate in a global digital society. It will require a large-scale integrated effort of government, education, and business, and it cannot wait.
Although humans are still better than GPT at a lot of things, there are many jobs where these capabilities are not used much. For example, many of the tasks done by a person in sales (digital or phone), service, or document handling (like payables, accounting, or insurance claim disputes) require decision-making but not the ability to learn continuously. Corporations have training programs for these activities and in most cases, they have a lot of examples of good and bad work. Humans are trained using these data sets, and soon these data sets will also be used to train the AIs that will empower people to do this work more efficiently.
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