The Digital Divide: A Quarter of the Nation Is Without Broadband
Karl Vick - March 30, 2017
Appalachia is not what it used to be. Hunger no longer stalks the hollows and ridges of a region once emblematic of American poverty, and no one lacks electricity. “Except for that one guy who comes in for car batteries,” says Tim Groves, from behind the counter at Advance Auto Parts in Woodsfield, Ohio. “That’s because he doesn’t want electricity,” explains Jason Covert, the store manager. “He wants to be off the grid.”
Digital Divides – Feeding America
Lee Rainie - February 09, 2017
Lee Rainie, director of Internet, Science and Technology research at the Pew Research Center, discussed the Center’s latest findings on digital divides based a survey conducted from Sept. 29 to Nov. 6, 2016. The presentation was to the board of Feeding America. Rainie looked at differences tied to internet access, home broadband ownership, and smartphone ownership by several demographic measures, including household income, educational attainment, race and ethnicity, age, and community type. He also discussed the Center’s research related to “digital readiness gaps” among technology users.
Smartphones help blacks, Hispanics bridge some – but not all – digital gaps with whites
Andrew Perrin - August 31, 2017
Blacks and Hispanics remain less likely than whites to own a traditional computer or have high-speed internet at home, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in fall 2016. But mobile devices are playing important roles in helping to bridge these differences.
Smartphones help those without broadband get online, but don’t necessarily bridge the digital divide
Monica Anderson and John B. Horrigan - October 03, 2016
Courts and regulators have increasingly seen high-speed internet as a public utility that is as essential to Americans as electricity and water. But many Americans still do not have broadband at home, and some Americans have turned to mobile devices as their primary gateway to the internet, according to Pew Research Center surveys.
The Unacceptable Persistence of the Digital Divide
Millions of Americans lack broadband access and computer skills. Can President Trump bring them into the digital economy?
David Talbot - December 16, 2016
Most homes in the United States have Internet service, but they don’t in the poor parts of Cleveland and nearby suburbs. A survey in 2012 showed that 58 percent of the area’s households with incomes under $20,000 had neither home broadband nor mobile Internet access, often because of the cost. Another 10 percent had a mobile phone but no home broadband. Until recently, one such household was a ground-floor two-bedroom apartment in a public housing project called Outhwaite Homes, where a circumspect 13-year-old girl named Ma’Niyah Larry lives with her mother, Marcella.
How Millennials today compare with their grandparents 50 years ago
Richard Fry, Ruth Igielnik and Eileen Patten - March 16, 2018
The past five decades – spanning from the time when the Silent Generation (today, in their 70s and 80s) was entering adulthood to the adulthood of today’s Millennials – have seen large shifts in U.S. society and culture. It has been a period during which Americans, especially Millennials, have become more detached from major institutions such as political parties, religion, the military and marriage. At the same time, the racial and ethnic make-up of the country has changed, college attainment has spiked and women have greatly increased their participation in the nation’s workforce.
11% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?
Monica Anderson, Andrew Perrin, and Jingjing Jiang - March 05, 2018
For many Americans, going online is an important way to connect with friends and family, shop, get news and search for information. Yet today, 11% of U.S. adults do not use the internet, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of survey data.
Digital America: A tale of the haves and have-mores
James Manyika, Sree Ramaswamy, Somesh Khanna, Hugo Sarrazin, Gary Pinkus, Guru Sethupathy, and Andrew Yaffe
December 2015
Digital capabilities, adoption, and usage are evolving at a supercharged pace. While most users scramble just to keep up with the relentless rate of innovation, the sectors, companies, and individuals on the digital frontier continue to push the boundaries of technology use—and to capture disproportionate gains as a result.
Closing the Global Economy’s New Digital Divide
Shamel Azmeh - February 26, 2018
As the global economy is transformed by new technologies, developing countries are at risk of losing out. While overcoming the resource constraints that limit developing countries’ investment in the digital economy will not be easy, failing to do so will carry a steeper price.
Development’s Digital Divide
Carl Bildt - August 25, 2015
On September 25, world leaders will gather in New York to adopt the new Sustainable Development Goals. And yet, in a time of profound scientific and technological change, the SDGs remain remarkably conventional.
10th Annual Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) Mobile Forecast Projects 70 Percent of Global Population Will Be Mobile Users
Cisco - February 03, 2016
ince 2000, when the first camera phone was introduced, the number of mobile users has quintupled. By 2020, there will be 5.5 billion mobile users, representing 70 percent of the global population[1], according to today’s release of the Cisco Visual Networking Index™ (VNI) Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast (2015 to 2020). The adoption of mobile devices, increased mobile coverage, and demand for mobile content are driving user growth two times faster than the global population over the next five years. This surge of mobile users, smart devices, mobile video and 4G networks will increase mobile data traffic eight-fold over the next five years.
The numbers behind the broadband ‘homework gap’
Justin B. Horrigan - April 20, 2015
Since the dawn of the internet, there’s been much talk about the digital divide – the gap between those with access to the internet and those without. But what about the “homework gap”?
In recent years, policymakers and advocates have pushed to make it easier for low-income households with school-age children to have broadband, arguing that low-income students are at a disadvantage without online access in order to do school work these days. Later this year, the Federal Communications Commission is expected to begin a rule-making process to overhaul the Lifeline Program, an initiative that subsidizes telephone subscriptions for low-income households, so that it would also cover broadband.