Addressing U.S. Digital Divides: How to Bring All Americans Fully into the Fold
Ashley Fox
April 25, 2021
Summary
For most Americans, internet access is a crucial component of everyday life. From banking and commerce to education and entertainment, there are very few areas of the economy and society that aren't partially online. However, despite the rapid proliferation of the digital economy, thousands of Americans are caught in the chasm of the United States’ rapidly growing digital divides. As of 2021, 7 percent of U.S. adults—most of whom are either older Americans, make less than $30,000 per year or have no higher than a high school education—say they do not use the Internet.[1] The effects of a digital divide exacerbate existing divides between urban and rural, able and disabled, wealthy and poor, native and nonnative, old and young, educated and under or uneducated, and white and non-white populations. As evidenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, access to the Internet can be critical. Those who are unable to get online risk falling even further behind in the economy and well-being.
Broadband access alone has the potential to change the lives of millions of Americans. For example, in rural communities, bridging the infrastructure gap could add more than $126 billion to the overall U.S. GDP, increase community incomes, lower unemployment rates, and help small businesses increase productivity and lower business costs.[2] Left unaddressed, however, digital divides will continue to put already at-risk individuals at further risk. Students who are already behind will fall further behind, out-of-work adults will have a more challenging time finding employment, immunocompromised individuals could have difficulty purchasing necessary goods online, everyday citizens risk receiving delayed information on critical health and safety issues, economic divides between large capitalist organizations and small businesses will grow, and the overall economy and society could suffer as communities continue to splinter between those who have connectivity and those who do not.
Governments at all levels and private sector companies have, in recent years, made significant strides in closing the digital divides, including bringing the number of internet non-adopters over the age of 65 from 86 percent in 2000 to 25 percent in 2021.[3] Initiatives to close digital gaps run the gamut from multimillion-dollar rural broadband initiatives to subsidized education programs and widespread public access hot spots in major cities. However, not all digital divides are created equally, and initiatives that may work for one community don't necessarily work for others. To truly close the overarching digital divide in the United States, the government and private sector must address the various components from a nuanced and multifaceted approach that accounts for the competing needs of disconnected communities.
Understanding the different digital divides present in the United States
Now a common buzz phrase, a digital divide can be defined as “any uneven distribution in the access to, use of, or impact of Information and Communication Technologies between any number of distinct groups.”[4] These groups may be defined based on social, geographical, or geopolitical criteria or otherwise. However, the nuances of the various U.S. digital divides cannot be boiled down to one blanket definition. The digital divide is not a monolith, and individuals in different parts of the country face additional challenges when trying to participate in the digital economy. In urban areas where more than 97% of Americans have access to some form of high-speed connectivity, the digital divide may manifest in disparities in affordability or lack of autonomy of how to use the connectivity (i.e., accessing the Internet through public libraries where there are restrictions to the type of content), versus in rural areas where the main barrier may be a literal lack of infrastructure to provide services or a connectivity monopoly by one primary carrier.[5] For disabled individuals, the ways that websites and applications are coded often create barriers to use. In contrast, a lack of education on using new technologies is most common among older and poorer Americans.
In 2006, researcher Jakob Nielsen categorized the digital divide into three distinct stages that can be used to more broadly encompass the disparate challenges faced by communities: economic divide, usability divide, and empowerment divide. The economic divide is the most straightforward and most understood stage of digital divides. This stage manifests in individuals or communities unable to afford the technology or internet service. Programs that provide laptops to schoolchildren or mobile phones to homeless adults target the economic divide. The economic divide may also manifest in businesses unable to afford the infrastructure to take their services online due to a high overhead or staffing costs. Nielsen argues that the economic divide is no longer an issue in Western countries like the United States, given the affordability of computers and smart technologies.[6] However, this is an oversimplification of the issue, and a lot has changed in the decade and a half since he established these categorizations. The economic divide is still a pervasive issue in the United States, particularly for rural and indigenous communities. It is more nuanced than showing who can afford a computer and who cannot.
The usability divide, Nielsen argues, is far worse than the economic divide. For many, technology remains so complicated that even if the economic divide were addressed and individuals were given computers and internet access for free, they would still be unable to achieve the full benefits of connectivity due to significant gaps in usability understanding. The usability divide is prominent among older and poor communities that lack even the basic education for using technology.[7] However, the usability divide is also prominent among prime-age, younger, and wealthier communities lacking in-depth digital hygiene and usability education, leading to significant security flaws and safety issues online. A 2019 report by Pew Research Center found that a majority of U.S. adults can answer fewer than half of the questions on a digital knowledge quiz correctly, specifically when it comes to cybersecurity and privacy online.[8] Moreover, as previously mentioned, usability divides are pervasive among disabled and differently-abled communities and the content they access online. Examples of usability divides for disabled users online include content that is difficult to read either by people or screen readers due to colors or font sizing, lack of captions on videos or audio content, and compatibility issues with voice recognition software, among others. When digital technologies are not built to be inclusive and accessible, poor, old, and disabled individuals shouldering the costs of making technology more accessible, which feeds back into the economic digital divide.[9]
The last stage, the empowerment divide, may be the most challenging stage to address and overcome. The empowerment divide occurs in the form of participation inequalities and how society itself creates barriers to communities making full use of technology and all its benefits. More nuanced than technology simply being technically unusable or physically inaccessible, empowerment divides are ingrained into the ways that companies hire individuals to create content and products, how the government sets regulations and governance standards, how private companies prioritize some content over other and feed advertisements to the masses, and even how machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms are built to recognize certain users in different ways.
Nielsen describes the empowerment divide as a problem whereby individuals lack the initiative or skill to "take matters into their own hands," resulting in them remaining at the "mercy of other people's decisions."[10] This description, like the economic divide argument, is an oversimplification of the problem and puts much of the onus of empowerment on the communities that are being marginalized. While some users may be too lazy or inept at empowering themselves digitally, the real empowerment issue is systemic. It depends heavily on the institutions responsible for creating and shaping the digital economy. When a system is built only to empower some individuals or communities, those left behind at the margins are not given the tools or opportunities to utilize technologies and the web to their full advantage. This is not an issue of having skill or initiative but an issue with having the resources and capacity to effect change. Simply giving people computers, the Internet, and making the websites easier to navigate is a Band-Aid for the deeper issues surrounding how we create content and products and how those content and products help or harm specific communities disproportionately. The longer the United States goes without addressing these deeper, systemic issues as the country—and the world—grows more digitized, the larger the divides will become and the harder it will be to address.
The COVID-19 pandemic shined a harsh, bright light on digital divides
The COVID-19 pandemic completely shifted the way that society operates on a fundamental level. In the process, the shift laid bare many hard truths about existing divides, specifically digital divides, between the haves and the have-nots across the United States. As the entire country shut down and was urged to stay home, society became collectively reliant on the Internet and the digital economy at rates never before experienced. Businesses took their operations online, healthcare providers attempted to provide services virtually, universities shut down their campuses, and schools scrambled to bring the classroom to students’ living rooms. Some fared much better than others.
For some, transitioning to life online meant increased data usage or buying a Peloton instead of going to the gym.[11] For many others, getting connected and staying connected was a struggle. The “homework gap,” which refers to the prevalence of school-age children—
Black, Hispanic, and low-income children—lacking the connectivity necessary for completing their schoolwork at home, became even more pronounced when schools went online.[12] A study by Pew found that 59 percent of low-income parents with school-aged children in remote learning environments said that their children would likely face at least one of three digital obstacles: having to do their schoolwork on a cellphone; having to use public Wi-Fi to finish schoolwork because there is not a reliable connection at home, or being unable to complete schoolwork because they do not have access to a computer at home. Paired with the existing data on education gaps between white and non-white student performance, success, and lifetime outcomes, students who were already behind are likely to fall even further behind at rates that will be difficult to recover from post-COVID.
The transition to online life wasn’t only difficult for households with school-aged children. One study found that 53 percent of Americans, especially college graduates and adults under 50, said that the Internet has been "essential" during the COVID-19 outbreak.[13] However, more than 50 percent of low-income Americans also stated that they were worried about their ability to pay for broadband or cellphone service throughout the pandemic. With government-mandated restrictions on conducting business or interacting with others in person, an inability to pay for broadband or cellphone services could be the difference between human interaction and isolation for millions of individuals.
Moreover, COVID-19 has had varying effects on business operations across industries, with disproportionately adverse impacts on small businesses that were not already online or lacked business models that transitioned smoothly to an online environment, particularly within the service and care industries. Workers across sectors faced massive layoffs and, in turn, put significant strains on online unemployment systems, job boards, and other resources that saw sharp increases in the number of users accessing their sites at a given time.[14] Individuals who already faced digital divides were now faced with increased insecurity when accessing government and financial services that they previously accessed in the analog.
Lastly, one of the most significant digital divide issues highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic has been the rollout of vaccinations across the country. With most states managing the lottery system for vaccine sign-ups through online web portals, much older, low-income, and disabled Americans have faced increased hardship in securing a vaccine.[15] Even for more tech-savvy, young, and non-disabled Americans, these web portals have been challenging to navigate, creating a Hunger Games-esque fight where only those with the time and wherewithal to refresh the page hundreds of times a day successful. Although many Americans have managed to snag a vaccine spot at this point in the vaccination rollout, the digital divide issue still presents a notable risk post-COVID with the prevalence of digital vaccine passports, adding yet another complicating piece in the already complex digital divide puzzle.
Current approaches to closing gaps
The United States has come a long way in addressing digital divides in the last 20 years, with much of the focus being on the physical infrastructure that provides broadband access to the masses. With significant government initiatives like the E-Rate: Universal Service Program for Schools and Libraries program, government-subsidized electronic health care record systems for hospitals and medical providers, the American Broadband Initiative, the Obama administration's ConnectED initiative, FCC Lifeline, and many more, the U.S. has managed to bring the vast majority of Americans to some form of baseline connectivity. However, according to the FCC, more than 21 million Americans don't have consistent, secure access to the Internet—especially those in rural or tribal communities. Microsoft publicly called out the FCC's estimates in 2019, saying that the number is astronomically higher, with around 163 million people not using "internet at broadband speeds."[16] This is a dramatic difference. The discrepancies between the FCC's reporting and Microsoft's research area are that the FCC collects and reports the data on broadband access. Essentially, the FCC solicits input from internet service providers on their coverage and then reports the data without checking if it is accurate. Because the FCC does not check the data and takes the companies at their word, large internet service providers are not disincentivized from inflating their numbers to avoid paying to address any coverage gaps.
How this vital data is being collected and reported is a highly problematic symptom of the United States’ approach to addressing digital divides. How can the FCC or other government agencies be trusted to adequately address more nuanced digital divide issues if they can't even get right the fundamental quantitative analysis for addressing the most fundamental issue? Because of the sheer amount of data that will undoubtedly be needed for addressing digital divides across the country, addressing the problem may be better designed if it comes from local or state governments and/or the private sector.
New York City, for example, recently unveiled plans to obtain affordable and universal broadband for all New Yorkers by addressing digital inequality across all five boroughs, and specifically within 33 neighborhoods that have been hit hardest by the COVID-19 pandemic.[17] This plan includes widescale investment in infrastructure buildout, including accelerated 5G buildout that utilizes more than 7,500 city light poles, predominantly in underserved areas, as mobile carrier hotspots. The city plans to dedicate more than $157 million specifically to affordable internet initiatives and is currently seeking requests for proposals for such projects.
On the other end of the spectrum (pun unintended), rural broadband initiatives have been making headway in many states, with Virginia announcing in 2019 that it received nearly $5 million in grants, while Tennessee dedicated $35 million in state funding and matching grants. Indiana allotted upwards of $100 million to upgrading rural broadband systems. Oregon and Washington have even opened dedicated broadband policy offices to address connectivity in their states.[18] Where the federal government may lack capacity or ability, many states and local governments have managed to take up the torch to try to bring their residents to better connectivity and access.
Given the economic effects and potential associated with digital divides, many private companies have also stepped in to help close the gap. Microsoft, for example, announced in 2015 its Rural Broadband Strategy for Connecting Rural America to New Opportunities. This strategy outlined many of the issues associated with private companies not investing in rural communities due to the cost (upwards of $30,000 per mile and billions of dollars total) of laying fiber optic cables and the belief that rural America is not worth investing in. To build collective ownership over the problem, Microsoft called upon the government and other private companies to work together with states and local communities on a holistic approach to closing the digital divide, with a promise to invest its resources, including money, patents, source code, and skills training to get the job done. The company called for a mixed-technology deployment approach that included innovative use of T.V. white space technologies to provide service at approximately 80 percent less than the cost of fiber-to-home service and bring internet access to 90 percent of rural Americans who are currently without access.[19] With the data collection and general resource issues that the federal government faces, a public-private partnership with well-resourced companies like Microsoft seems like the most promising approach to addressing the digital divide as a whole.
Policy Recommendations
Closing the overarching digital divide in the United States will require a comprehensive approach that elicits buy-in from the government, the private sector, and community members at all levels. It will require widescale regulation changes, infrastructure buildout, curriculum designing, and hiring practices that will push the country to a more inclusive and accessible internet that is available to all Americans wherever they need it, whether that is in their homes, on their phones, at work, or school. Addressing the various aspects of the many types of digital divides in the country and all three stages of Neilsen’s digital divide framework will not be easy, but it can be accomplished. There are many ways that the various stakeholders could approach the digital divide, including:
Classifying the Internet as a public utility
If COVID-19 showed us anything, it showed the importance of giving all Americans access to the Internet in the same way they can access water, electricity, and other public utilities. Having the infrastructure for internet service alone is not enough to fully ensure that Americans have the connectivity they need to participate in the digital economy. Large companies with service monopolies, especially in rural states, should not be allowed to price poorer consumers out of high-speed access, nor should they be allowed to decide that certain areas, like tribal communities, are not worth laying high-speed fiber cables to, based on the low-profit potential. The government should designate internet access as a basic need and utility and establish mechanisms for holding internet service providers accountable. Moreover, the government’s “light-touch” approach to regulating the internet service space must change. The United States currently ranks 119th out of 206 countries in terms of broadband costs. Moreover, the Internet is often slow, making the United States one of the most expensive countries for slow Internet in the world.[20] This is unacceptable. By classifying the Internet as a public utility, the government can pave the way not only for greater physical access to high-speed Internet but also for establishing regulations on private company actions that create empowerment divides on the Internet, such as algorithmic bias, content moderation, hate speech, data privacy, etc.
Mandating digital literacy education
Providing digital literacy education in schools and the broader community is an excellent first step for closing usability divides. On top of creating a comprehensive digital literacy curriculum for K-12 schools, policymakers must include adults who lack technological understanding at various levels. As much of the digital economy formed over the last few decades, many older American adults have never been formally educated on technology use, and many prime-age or even younger adults don't understand the risks and vulnerabilities they face on the Internet. This has resulted in generations of users at high risk of manipulation and influence who don't even realize it. The government must fill knowledge gaps for individuals outside of school-age through outreach campaigns, alert systems, and a free adult education curriculum.
Creating community access hubs in low-access areas
While libraries are a great baseline for closing digital divide gaps for low-access communities, they often lack the necessary support systems for helping individuals fully utilize the Internet and its benefits. During COVID-19, the U.S. government $50 million in museums and libraries to help address the digital divide across the country by expanding digital network access, purchasing internet-accessible devices, and providing technical support services to their communities.[21] However, giving access to resources is not enough. In cities like Washington, D.C., libraries have attempted to create a more community access-hub environment by providing technical tutorials, workshops, and other community-based activities that give community members access and empower them to use the available technologies to their full capabilities. Cities and states should endeavor to create community hubs that promote entrepreneurialism and other socially and economically beneficial outcomes for users.
Subsidizing or providing tax breaks to incentivize private companies to lay more fiber in less-profitable areas
One of the most significant barriers to physical infrastructure buildout in under- and unconnected areas of the country is companies' unwillingness to provide services to places where they will see fewer profits. If policymakers are unable or unwilling to designate internet service as a public utility, they must incentivize private company investment in underserved areas. This can be accomplished through subsidies, similar to the Medicare electronic health record incentive program, that give local governments and businesses subsidies to improve connectivity or through tax breaks for internet service providers who lay the necessary infrastructure and provide services in these areas. These subsidies and tax incentives should also incentivize companies to provide these services at lower and affordable costs in areas where affordability is a significant issue.
[1] Andrew Perrin and Sara Atske, “7% of Americans Don’t Use the Internet. Who Are They?,” Pew Research Center (blog), April 2, 2021, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/04/02/7-of-americans-dont-use-the-internet-who-are-they/.
[2] “A Rural Broadband Strategy: Connecting Rural America to New Opportunities,” Microsoft On the Issues, July 10, 2017, https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2017/07/10/rural-broadband-strategy-connecting-rural-america-new-opportunities/.
[3] Perrin and Atske, “7% of Americans Don’t Use the Internet. Who Are They?”
[4] “Conversation 360: THE DIGITAL DIVIDE & DISABILITY,” Kids Out and About Rochester, August 4, 2020, https://rochester.kidsoutandabout.com/content/conversation-360-digital-divide-disability.
[5] “Bridging The Digital Divide For All Americans,” Federal Communications Commission, July 27, 2017, https://www.fcc.gov/about-fcc/fcc-initiatives/bridging-digital-divide-all-americans.
[6] Jakob Nielsen, “Digital Divide: The 3 Stages,” Nielsen Norman Group, November 19, 2006, https://www.nngroup.com/articles/digital-divide-the-three-stages/.
[7] Nielsen.
[8] Emily Vogels and Monica Anderson, “Americans and Digital Knowledge,” Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech (blog), October 9, 2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/10/09/americans-and-digital-knowledge/.
[9] “Overcoming the Digital Divide to Ensure Disability Inclusiveness | United Nations Enable,” February 9, 2021, https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/news/dspd/overcoming-the-digital-divide-to-ensure-disability-inclusiveness.html.
[10] Nielsen, “Digital Divide.”
[11] “Data Usage Has Increased 47 Percent During COVID-19 Quarantine,” PCMAG, accessed April 25, 2021, https://www.pcmag.com/news/data-usage-has-increased-47-percent-during-covid-19-quarantine.
[12] Brooke Auxier and Monica Anderson, “As Schools Close Due to the Coronavirus, Some U.S. Students Face a Digital ‘Homework Gap,’” Pew Research Center (blog), March 16, 2020, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/03/16/as-schools-close-due-to-the-coronavirus-some-u-s-students-face-a-digital-homework-gap/.
[13] Emily Vogels, Andrew Perrin, Lee Raine, et al., “53% of Americans Say the Internet Has Been Essential During the COVID-19 Outbreak,” Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech (blog), April 30, 2020, https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2020/04/30/53-of-americans-say-the-internet-has-been-essential-during-the-covid-19-outbreak/.
[14] Jed Pressgrove, “Have State Unemployment Insurance Systems Recovered from COVID-19?,” GovTech, February 25, 2021, https://www.govtech.com/computing/Have-State-Unemployment-Insurance-Systems-Recovered-from-COVID-19.html.
[15] "U.S. Digital Divide Threatens Vaccine Access for Older People," Human Rights Watch, February 8, 2021, https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/02/08/us-digital-divide-threatens-vaccine-access-older-people.
[16] Devin Coldewey, “Microsoft Says Its Data Shows FCC Reports Massively Overstate Broadband Adoption,” TechCrunch (blog), April 8, 2019, https://social.techcrunch.com/2019/04/08/microsoft-says-its-data-shows-fcc-reports-massively-overstate-broadband-adoption/.
[17] Published March 3, 2021 • Updated on March 3, and 2021 at 11:18 Am, “NYC Looks to Narrow the Digital Divide Through Latest Initiative; Unveils Next Steps,” NBC New York (blog), accessed April 25, 2021, https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/coronavirus/nyc-looks-to-narrow-the-digital-divide-through-latest-initiative-unveils-next-steps/2921729/.
[18] “Rural Virginia Gets a $14 Million Boost for New Broadband,” StateScoop, March 29, 2019, https://statescoop.com/rural-virginia-gets-a-14-million-boost-for-new-broadband/.
[19] “A Rural Broadband Strategy.”
[20] Facebook et al., “Column: The Pandemic Makes Clear It’s Time to Treat the Internet as a Utility,” Los Angeles Times, October 23, 2020, https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-10-23/coronavirus-internet-is-a-utility.
[21] “Federal Government Invests $50M in Museums, Libraries to Address Digital Divide During COVID-19 | Institute of Museum and Library Services,” March 27, 2020, https://www.imls.gov/news/federal-government-invests-50m-museums-libraries-address-digital-divide-during-covid-19.