The Digital Divide
The journey to closing the gap
One of my favorite childhood memories is coming home from school with my brother, bursting through our front door, and booking it right towards our clunky Dell computer running good old Windows XP. My brother and I would battle to sit on a little gray and frayed office chair for hours on end while one of us played Club Penguin, chatting with other penguins and playing minigames.
While we were lucky enough to have access to a computer and the Internet, a lot of people didn’t and still don’t today. This is what is known as the Digital Divide.
The Digital Divide
The Digital Divide is known as the gap between different people in society who have easy access to computers and the Internet. More specifically, it is the growing gap between people who are elderly, poor, disabled, or living in more rural areas without the luxury of computers and the Internet and people who are wealthy or middle class and live in more urban areas that have easy access to computers and the Internet.
A few factors can play in here, such as education, income, and race. Millions of people are left at a disadvantage, unable to receive better education or have less access to learning.
Positive and Negative Impacts
A positive impact of closing the Digital Divide is giving people the opportunity to do productive and/or beneficial things for their lives and others. Being able to use the Internet as a tool to create or produce or learn can offer benefits for a new career or receiving education. To think even bigger, one with access to computers and the Internet have the potential to change the world for good.
While there are positives to bridging the gap, there are also negatives. A negative impact of closing the Digital Divide is giving people the chance to misuse the Internet, such as being drawn in by those bright, flashy colored advertisements or visiting bad sites.
Closing the Gap
Literacy skills
One of the first steps to take to help close the gap is to start. That first step can be verifying a person’s literacy skills. If you think about it, how can anyone gain tech literacy without knowing basic literacy?
This is where schooling education comes in, which I believe would be the best place for future generations of children to first learn how to use technology and further close the gap.
Tech institutions
Another thing is building community access centers and taking care of existing ones, specifically meant for those wanting to gain technological literacy skills. In addition to these institutions, trained technical staff would have to be onsite. You might also call these places libraries, as long as they have access to the Internet and computers.
Embrace the future of technology
Promoting technology as the future is a way to help overcome the Digital Divide. However, there will always be a person who refuses to use technology and wants to live life without it, and that is perfectly understandable. Sometimes I wish technology didn’t exist because when I catch myself using my phone or computer too much, I forget I am a living, breathing being on Earth.
The goal is to change their attitude toward technology, to welcome it for future generations of children who will need it to further their education and career.
Everyone can be connected through technology and the Internet. Technology will continue to change and shape society for the next several decades and beyond. Embracing this change and taking action is essential to building a future that closes the Digital Divide for good.
Here’s a few cool organizations/resources about overcoming the Digital Divide:
Sources:
Digital Divide. (n.d.). Stanford Computer Science. Retrieved May 15, 2023, from https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/digital-divide/start.html
Understanding the Digital Divide in Education. (2020, December 15). School of Education Online Programs. Retrieved May 15, 2023, from https://soeonline.american.edu/blog/digital-divide-in-education/
