The Digital Divide- How it has affected us

In the previous weeks modules we have focused and studied the Digital Divide epidemic, the Digital Divide is how our society is divided due to the upcoming and advancing use of technology in our everyday lives. We really rely on technology more than we know, especially right now with COVID, we use technology for school, zoom interviews and meetings, and all around connecting with those who we can’t be with in person right now. But this allows us to also we seperated from each other due to the possibility of not everybody having the same comodities as ourselves perhaps. This became most relevant to me in the Ted Talk by Lukas Pietrzak, he states that “up to 43 percent of rural Americans who don’t have access to high-speed Internet,” (Pietrzak, 2019). After listening to that statement, that made me realize that’s almost 50%, you figure almost 50% of rural Americans don’t have access to the internet, and the internet is what makes our world, we use it for everything, and of course you have to take into account those who are old fashioned and obviously choose to not have it, but still you just wonder how they are keeping up and what it would be like if they were to get internet. I think this topic of the digital divide really hit home in the Taco Bell story, this discusses the issue of 2 little girls having to sit outside a Taco Bell to use their internet in order to do their school work, and of course this received national attention as it should, with both a former California senator and Phillip DeFranco himself stating, “The social divide is the deepest ever now,” (Phillip,2020). Especially as mentioned in some of the other readings for this week and as stated before, due to COVID we’ve seen more issues with the social divide by having kids and us even do online schooling, its unfortunate that these 2 little girls had to go through this but in the end, the girls and their mom got enough money to find a stable place to live and internet for the girls to do their schoolwork but still, this is an issue and it shouldn’t of taken a global pandemic to realize how we are digitally divided as a country and how this affects those of lower socio-economic status. In the end, the Taco Bell story came happy but still goes to show something needs to be done to get rid of the digital divide and allow internet access to those who need it. I think it should also be free to those of lower socio-economic status since money and availability is some of the biggest issues with the digital divide. This digital technology has really divided us, in the Ted Talk by Youngmoo Kim, he discusses how this digital divide has affected us as a society, “in economics through technology we’ve actually widened the divide not only adversely impacting people of color but anyone who lacks socio-economic privilege,” (Kim, 2019). I think further explains the claim inequality by not being able to provide internet for those who have lower socio-economic privilege, despite race and ethnicity, the internet is not a resource those of Lower class can afford, when they could use the internet for the same and maybe even more purposes than the average Joe; by the lower class not having this access it lowers their chance of knowing what’s going on in the world but most importantly lower their chances of getting a job and having access to other helpful resources. I wish there was something to be done to stop this issue of the social divide and help with allowing access to the internet to those who don’t have it, I think internet should be able to available to those who want it to help them keep connected with the world and possibly their families. I agree that this digital divide has allowed for inequalities not only racial and socio-economically but also socially, the society is divided in a way due to this and hopefully something can be done about it in the future. I think this is something that needs major improvements to allow for everyone to have access to technology and internet to keep up with our ever-growing and advancing society.