Charting and Bridging Digital Divides

Many assume that the digital divide – the large numbers of people who are not connected to the Internet – is small, shrinking, and rapidly becoming irrelevant. It is not. The term “digital divide” refers to inequalities in Internet access and use, ranging from the global level, to nation states, to communities, and to individuals. The divide is here for some time to come. It is large, multifaceted, and, in some ways, it is not shrinking. Moreover, the divide is socially patterned, so that there are systematic and meaningful variations in the kinds of people who are on and off the Internet. These patterns vary between nations and over time, so last year’s divide often does not necessarily resemble this year’s, and Country A’s divide does not necessarily resemble Country B’s. Indeed, it is more accurate to use the plural – digital divides – because the nature of the digital divide varies within and between countries, both developed and developing. There is no one digital divide; there are many divides. To be sure, the Internet has grown rapidly and hugely in the last decade. Educated estimates show that use of the Internet has diffused to the point that the number of Internet users around the globe has surged from 900,000 in 1993, 25 million in 1995, 83 million in 1999, 513 million in 2001, to more than 600 million by the end of 2002. More recently, other new media, such as Web-enabled mobile phones, have fostered computermediated technology. Yet, widespread diffusion does not equal ubiquity, even within developed countries. The first digital divide appeared at the very start of the Internet. Early users were disproportionately affluent, male, white, better educated, and from developed countries, especially the United States. Rather than shrinking with expanding Internet use, the global digital divide between developed countries and developing nations continues to be huge. Denizens of economically developed countries sometimes forget what a small percentage of the world’s population is online. After all, the majority of their country-mates are on the Internet, as are the economically advanced segments of developing countries. Yet, only 10 percent of the world’s population was on the Internet in 2002, and 88 percent of these Internet users resided in industrialized countries. Within countries, the uneven diffusion of the Internet appears along familiar lines of social inequality such as socioeconomic status, gender, age, geographic location, and ethnicity. Moreover, having access to computers and the Internet and possessing the ability to use them effectively are two different issues. However, marketers, media, and governments often report only the number of people who have access to the Internet. The question is not whether people have ever glanced at a monitor or put their hands on a keyboard, but the extent to which they regularly use a computer and the Internet for meaningful purposes. At present, the digital divide has multiple aspects. As noted above, it is really digital divides. First, the digital divide is not a binary yes/no question of whether the basic physical access to the Internet is available. Access does not equal use. Rather, the digital divide is a continuum ranging from physical access, financial access, cognitive access, and content access to political access. Second, the term “digital divide” has both technological and social resonances. There are at least five

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