The Digital Divide: Not just Access but Usage

When I first learned about the digital divide the focus was on access---ensuring that low-income schools had the same access to computers and the internet as higher income schools. This access gap was real and the focus was justified. In 1998 the ratio of students to instructional computers connected to the internet was 17.2 in schools with greater than 50% minority students enrolled and 10.1 in low minority student schools—a very significant gap. But over the last 12 years, as the price of computing has fallen beyond anyone’s expectations and with federal programs like ERate, the in-school access divide has all but disappeared. A study by Gray and Lewis (2009) showed that high schools with student populations of more than 20 percent at or beneath the poverty level have just below the amount of access to online district resources (90 percent compared to 94 percent) of higher SES schools as well as access to course management and delivery software (58 percent compared to 59 percent).

The digital divide however persists, albeit in a new and perhaps more troubling form. The new divide focuses on how students actually engage with the technology. Low income and higher income students are using the technology differently, and new research suggests that these differences may have implications on what students actually get out of their technology usage. A study by Neuman and Celano (2006) tracked how students used computers in public libraries. They found that children in low-income areas spent nearly half of their time (49%) on below-age-level activity. Comparatively children in middle income areas spent only 7 percent of their time on below-age-level activities. Additionally children from the middle income area engaged in activities that resulted in three times for reading than children from the low-income area.

Low income youth’s engagement in lower level activities may in part be to lower levels of literacy (Neuman and Celano, 2006), but it may also be influenced by less access technologically sophisticated adults. Neuman can Celano found that middle income youth were mentored by parents, peers, or staff to use the technological resources strategically. Low income youth, on the other hand received virtually not mentorship.

Regardless of the reason why lower income youth are engaging with technology at lower levels, what is clear is that unless technology usage---and not just access--enters into the discourse, technology has no hope of being the great equalizer that we'd all like it to be.