Let's bury the digital divide myth

In most newsrooms, if you chat long enough, someone will bring up the moldy old question: What about the digital divide?

Let's bury that.

Some 60 million U.S. households have Internet access. Daily newspapers reach only about 50 million households. Should we be talking about the print partition? The crushed-tree chasm?

Jakob Nielsen tackles the subject in his column this week, noting that falling prices for computer technology have demolished the "economic divide" argument.

Nielsen also notes that senior citizens constitute the "main remaining source of growth in Internet use."

At work I keep a pretty close eye on the characteristics of active users on our local websites -- community bloggers, photographers -- and it's impressive how older users have joined in the conversation. The notion that the Internet is for young people and print is for old people is another one that should go away.

Time has a way of tossing us all into the latter category, willing or not. It's better than the alternative. We can take our laptops with us.

Comments

I understand that it's not a demographic divide, but I think it's misleading to say there's no divide at all: latest figures we have in the UK indicate that more than 70% of people who don't use the net have no plans to go online (http://qurl.com/ds252). There's a divide still, between people who have/want the Internet and those who sincerely don't see the point. That doesn't seem likely to change any time soon: perhaps not until April 2043 when Philip Meyer has the last newspaper reader dying...

The divide that still exists is in access to the internet. In Wester Massachusetts, a grassroots group The Shutesbury Leverett Broadband Committee have been working very hard to get high-speed internet access in this remote region . I also have some friends in Colrain, Heath, and Orange, who not only have extremely limited cell access, but can only gain access to the Internet via extremely high priced and unreliable satellite service.

The problem that plagues much of Western Mass also plagues New Hampshire and Vermont. As reported by the New York Times (article now only through TimesSelect) Verizon may even be pulling out of these regions, not only leaving them without any internet service, but without reliable telephone service as well.

And the towns simply do not have the tax base to bring in wifi for everyone. There is no state assistance for wifi.

So, really, the divide remains. It's just not along race lines--which may make it more difficult for many to understand. If one doesn't live in these areas, or have friends and relatives, it's hard to understand or appreciate their problems with access and the telcos are certainly working to keep the problem mum.