The Digital Divide Has Narrowed; New Problem Is Emerging
The digital divide is narrowing, but the nation must turn its attention to a gap in digital readiness, said John Horrigan, a communications researcher and former FCC official, at a forum sponsored by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. Releasing a new study at the event Tuesday, Horrigan noted the percentage of Americans with broadband at home has increased from 63 percent in 2009 to 72 percent in 2013, and when new devices like smartphones are included, the percentage of Americans with advanced online access rises to 82 percent. Horrigan also said 85 percent of Americans use the Internet. The number of people without access to broadband has decreased from 83 million in 2009 to 43 million now.
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A gap, particularly based on income and age, still exists, Horrigan said, but it’s one not based on “access to wires but something else.” According to his study (http://bit.ly/1lBFocV), based on a 2013 survey by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, 29 percent were deemed to have low digital skills based on their knowledge of terms like spyware, cookies and apps, as well as their own description of their skills. Another 42 percentage had moderately high skills and 29 percent had a high skill level, said Horrigan, who helped work on the National Broadband Plan.
The skills divide is a larger one than the broadband access divide, he said. Based on 2012 census data, he estimated that 43 million people do not have advanced online access, but 70 million have low skills. He estimated 33 million Americans, almost half of those with low skills, have access to advanced Internet. Seniors and low-income people tend to have lower digital skills. Extrapolating from Horrigan’s figures, 63 percent, or about 44 million of the 70 million estimated to have low digital skills, have a high school diploma or less, Scott Wallsten, the Technology Policy Institute’s vice president for research and senior fellow, said at the forum. Among those with low skills, 42 percent had annual incomes of less than $35,000 and among those with high skills, two-thirds earned $60,000 or more, he said. It raises the question of whether the solution to the skills divide is rooted in the underlying issues of poverty, he said.
A sign of the significance of the skills disparity is that only 10 percent of those with low skills search for jobs online, he said, whereas five times as many, 52 percent, of people with high skills take advantage of the Internet when looking for work, he said. Unless addressed, he said, government efforts to provide more services online may be less widely used than hoped.
Others on the panel said the gap in access to getting online remains a significant issue. Forty-three million people is still a significant number of people, said Nicol Turner-Lee, the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council’s vice president and chief research and policy officer. The long wait times for computers at libraries illustrates that many still do not have easy access to the Internet, said Larra Clark, program director in the American Library Association’s Program on Networks and the Program on America’s Libraries for the 21st Century. The digital readiness divide remains a significant issue, both agreed.
The gap in skills only exacerbates other barriers low-income people can face, like language, Clark said. “I don’t know anyone who hasn’t used the Internet for a job search,” Clark said. “Ten percent [among those with low skills] is incomprehensible.” The problem is an ever-evolving one as technology changes rapidly, she noted. “If you are digitally literate today, you may not be tomorrow."
Dealing with the issue is one of public interest, said Laura Breeden, NTIA’s program director for public computing and broadband adoption. More public entities, from schools to the healthcare system, are going online, said Breeden, who said her thoughts reflected her own and not necessarily those of the agency. State unemployment programs increasingly require recipients to file for benefits online, she said. There may be ancillary benefits to promoting digital skills, she said. “If you become more confident, maybe you'll try new things, learn more things, and make better decisions."
Existing programs, including Lifeline, should be used to promote digital readiness, said Horrigan, who also said communities should designate “tech champions” to promote digital readiness, in much the same way they created bicycling coordinators to promote biking. Horrigan also recommended utilizing libraries and engaging philanthropies to promote readiness.