Digital divide facts for kids

The digital divide is the unequal access to digital technology, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, and the internet. The digital divide worsens inequality around access to information and resources. In the Information Age, people without access to the Internet and other technology are at a disadvantage, for they are unable or less able to connect with others, find and apply for jobs, shop, and learn.

As of 2021, only about half of the world's population had access to the internet, leaving 3.7 billion people without internet. A majority of those are in developing countries, and a large portion of them are women. Also, the governments of different countries have different policies about privacy, data governance, speech freedoms and many other factors. Government restrictions make it challenging for technology companies to provide services in certain countries. This disproportionately impacts the different regions of the world; Europe has the highest percentage of the population online while Africa has the lowest. From 2010 to 2014 Europe went from 67% to 75% and in the same time span Africa went from 10% to 19%.

Network speeds play a large role in the quality of an internet connection. Large cities and towns may have better access to high speed internet than rural areas, which may have limited or no service. Households can be locked into a specific service provider, since it may be the only carrier that even offers service to the area. This applies to regions that have developed networks, like the United States, but also applies to developing countries, so that very large areas have virtually no coverage. In those areas there are very limited actions that a consumer could take, since the issue is mainly infrastructure. Technologies that provide an internet connection through satellite are becoming more common, like Starlink, but they are still not available in many regions.

Based on location, a connection may be so slow as to be virtually unusable, solely because a network provider has limited infrastructure in the area. For example, to download 5 GB of data in Taiwan it might take about 8 minutes, while the same download might take 30 hours in Yemen.

From 2020 to 2022, average download speeds in the EU climbed from 70 Mbps to more than 120 Mbps, owing mostly to the demand for digital services during the pandemic. There is still a large rural-urban disparity in internet speeds, with metropolitan areas in France and Denmark reaching rates of more than 150 Mbps, while many rural areas in Greece, Croatia, and Cyprus have speeds of less than 60 Mbps.

The EU aspires for complete gigabit coverage by 2030, however as of 2022, only over 60% of Europe has high-speed internet infrastructure, signalling the need for more enhancements.

Reasons

As of 2014, the gap in a digital divide was known to exist for a number of reasons. Obtaining access to ICTs and using them actively has been linked to demographic and socio-economic characteristics including income, education, race, gender, geographic location (urban-rural), age, skills, awareness, political, cultural and psychological attitudes. Multiple regression analysis across countries has shown that income levels and educational attainment are identified as providing the most powerful explanatory variables for ICT access and usage.

In developing countries, a digital divide between women and men is apparent in tech usage, with men more likely to be competent tech users. Controlled statistical analysis has shown that income, education and employment act as confounding variables and that women with the same level of income, education and employment actually embrace ICT more than men (see Women and ICT4D), this argues against any suggestion that women are "naturally" more technophobic or less tech-savvy. However, each nation has its own set of causes or the digital divide. For example, the digital divide in Germany is unique because it is not largely due to difference in quality of infrastructure.

The correlation between income and internet use suggests that the digital divide persists at least in part due to income disparities. Most commonly, a digital divide stems from poverty and the economic barriers that limit resources and prevent people from obtaining or otherwise using newer technologies.

Solutions

In the year 2000, the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) program launched its Online Volunteering service, which uses ICT as a vehicle for and in support of volunteering. It constitutes an example of a volunteering initiative that effectively contributes to bridge the digital divide. ICT-enabled volunteering has a clear added value for development. If more people collaborate online with more development institutions and initiatives, this will imply an increase in person-hours dedicated to development cooperation at essentially no additional cost. This is the most visible effect of online volunteering for human development.

Since May 17, 2006, the United Nations has raised awareness of the divide by way of the World Information Society Day. In 2001, it set up the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Task Force. Later UN initiatives in this area are the World Summit on the Information Society since 2003, and the Internet Governance Forum, set up in 2006.

As of 2009, the borderline between ICT as a necessity good and ICT as a luxury good was roughly around US$10 per person per month, or US$120 per year, which means that people consider ICT expenditure of US$120 per year as a basic necessity. Since more than 40% of the world population lives on less than US$2 per day, and around 20% live on less than US$1 per day (or less than US$365 per year), these income segments would have to spend one third of their income on ICT (120/365 = 33%). The global average of ICT spending is at a mere 3% of income. Potential solutions include driving down the costs of ICT, which includes low-cost technologies and shared access through Telecentres.

In 2022, the US Federal Communications Commission started a proceeding "to prevent and eliminate digital discrimination and ensure that all people of the United States benefit from equal access to broadband internet access service, consistent with Congress's direction in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

Social media websites serve as both manifestations of and means by which to combat the digital divide. The former describes phenomena such as the divided users' demographics that make up sites such as Facebook, WordPress and Instagram. Each of these sites hosts communities that engage with otherwise marginalized populations.

Libraries

A laptop lending kiosk at Texas A&M University–Commerce's Gee Library

In 2010, an "online indigenous digital library as part of public library services" was created in Durban, South Africa to narrow the digital divide by not only giving the people of the Durban area access to this digital resource, but also by incorporating the community members into the process of creating it.

In 2002, the Gates Foundation started the Gates Library Initiative which provides training assistance and guidance in libraries.

In Kenya, lack of funding, language, and technology illiteracy contributed to an overall lack of computer skills and educational advancement. This slowly began to change when foreign investment began. In the early 2000s, the Carnegie Foundation funded a revitalization project through the Kenya National Library Service. Those resources enabled public libraries to provide information and communication technologies to their patrons. In 2012, public libraries in the Busia and Kiberia communities introduced technology resources to supplement curriculum for primary schools. By 2013, the program expanded into ten schools.

Effective use

Even though individuals might be capable of accessing the Internet, many are opposed by barriers to entry, such as a lack of means to infrastructure or the inability to comprehend or limit the information that the Internet provides. Some individuals can connect, but they do not have the knowledge to use what information ICTs and Internet technologies provide them. This leads to a focus on capabilities and skills, as well as awareness to move from mere access to effective usage of ICT.

Community informatics (CI) focuses on issues of "use" rather than "access". CI is concerned with ensuring the opportunity not only for ICT access at the community level but also, according to Michael Gurstein, that the means for the "effective use" of ICTs for community betterment and empowerment are available. Gurstein has also extended the discussion of the digital divide to include issues around access to and the use of "open data" and coined the term "data divide" to refer to this issue area.

Images for kids

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  The digital divide measured in terms of bandwidth is not closing, but fluctuating up and down. Gini coefficients for telecommunication capacity (in kbit/s) among individuals worldwide

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  Fixed-line phone and Internet 2000–2010: subscriptions (top) and kbit/s (bottom) per capita

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  depiction of a smartphone being used

See also

In Spanish: Brecha digital para niños