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The Digital Divide In America


Research has found that race has been a determinate for the amount of access a person has to computers and the internet; and race is largely tied in with economic status because many minorities cannot afford both computers and internet access. Hispanics, African Americans, and Native Americans are the minorities that greatly experience the Digital Divide.

About 72% of Hispanics and 70% of African Americans own desktop computers, compared to 83% of whites, in a study done by the Pew Research Center.

For Internet use, 78% of African American’s and 78% of Latino adults go online at least occasionally, compared to 87% of white adults.

Also, rural areas in America are less likely to have internet access, with Americans living in urban areas being 3 times as likely to have Internet access as Americans in rural areas.

Schools in rural areas also have dramatically lower access to the internet, with 41% of America’s rural schools being unable to get a high speed internet connection at all.

Students unable to have access to both computers and the internet at home and school is a major issue today because of the growing emphasis put on the use of technology for businesses, communication, and daily life in general. Because the people who are unable to have access to these technologies are already at a disadvantage, the unequal access to technologies will only cause further disparity to these groups.

The issue of school’s inability to provide students with access to computers was largely attributed to a lack of access of these technologies. Although this is still an issue for schools, with many universities, colleges and programs providing old computers to schools, access is no longer the main issue. Rather is has been found that schools who have computers offered to them through programs, and the only thing required is to apply for them, do not apply for them.

Why is this?

It turns out that many teachers are uncomfortable with using the technologies or are unsure of how to implement them into classrooms. Teachers who do not have smartphones and weren’t raised with these technologies are reluctant to bring them into their classrooms.

How can it be made easier for teachers to take an interest in implementing technologies into their classrooms?

An answer to this is to show the value of computers in education and get teachers comfortable with using these technologies. In California, members of the Silicon Valley Manufacturing Group are doing just that by providing paid internships in which local teachers learn about technological advances and develop plans for sharing that knowledge with students.

Decreasing the gap of the Digital Divide in America is going to take conscious efforts by not just teachers, but also business and community members, who have the resources and knowledge available to provide schools the incentive and resources for using technology in their classrooms.

Also Internet providers should be given some incentive to provide Internet access to rural and poorer areas. Right now there is little incentive because of the lack of profit they would receive from those areas.

One incentive for Internet providers is that research has found when high speed internet is available in an area, employment dramatically increases. This is because companies that rely on high speed Internet move to these areas.

This demonstrates that while initially providing high speed access to poorer areas will not be profitable, in the long run it has incentives.

- "Benefits- Bridging the Digital Divide". Speedmatters, n.d. Web.

- Caumont, Amber. "Who's Not Online? 5 Factors Tied to the Digital Divide". Pew Research Center, 8 November, 2013. Web.

- Harvey, Brison. " Bridging the Digital Divide in Classrooms". Education Week, 2 July, 2014. Web.

- Huskerson, Tom. "Economic, Racial Digital Divide Creates Larger Education Gap Nationwide". IVN, 27 December, 2013. Web.


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