What is the Digital Divide?

The term “Digital Divide” dates back to the 1990s, even though some of the concepts of information poverty and deficiency have been the subject of research for over fifty years (Marcella & Chowdhury, 2020):

The term digital divide first came to prominence in 1995 when the National Telecommunications and Information Administration published its study on the disparity in access to the internet[.] (Cunningham & Rosenblatt, 2018, p. 198)

It refers simply to the fact that there are the “haves” and the “have-nots” when it comes to information technology and access to the internet. What causes the digital divide? Structural inequalities, such as racial and gender prejudices, not to mention community access to taxpayer funds, are generally seen as the major causes (Ibid., 2018). In short: lower income people have less access to information technology and the internet. And as the COVID-19 pandemic continues and more and more schools go online, requiring computers and the internet, students without those tools may see their academic performance suffer (Johnson & Burke, 2020). According to the Office of the Governor of California, as many as one in five California students may lack the technology they need to get online (Office of Governor Newsom, 2020).

Rural areas in general have a greater digital divide than urban, due to distribution of resources (Ibid., 2020). This is a global problem, not just a problem in California. Marcella and Chowdhury (2020) point out that information poverty persists worldwide. The United Nations has workgroups focused on the issue, and the situation seems to be slowly improving, but much work needs to be done. Libraries, of course, are an important part of the solution.

And that, in a nutshell, is the digital divide.