The importance of Digital Divide and Digital equity
According to Pazurek and Feyissa, the term digital divide refers to the gap between individuals who have access to ICTs and those who do not (Pazurek & Feyissa, 2015). My definition of Digital divide is that it forces people to distinguish between the rich and poor. Rich people can buy internet and can have access to internet when needed whereas the poor population struggles to get access to internet and so they often stay behind today’s generation which we call it as a Digital world. “Digital equity refers to whether people can access and effectively use the technology necessary to participate in modern society” (Quaintance, 2018) which I think is the most important in today’s world. Digital equity overcomes the problem that was raised by digital divide and give everyone equal access to the internet.
I have many examples of digital divide where some of them are my personal experiences. One personal example that I want to share is related to the iPad pro, and newer models which now-a-days are used by many students. I have many classmates who use ipad pro and be able to share their screen when needed during the zoom breakout session and also the group meetings, and I often think that I want to buy it because it is easy to study if we have that as we are able to share our screen and notes with each other, but I don’t have enough money to buy that expensive gadget and so I often have hard time sharing my notes to others which leads to lower grades in class. According to Calarco,Gonzales, and Lynch, the digital divide is correlated with the average grade of students (Gonzales, Calarco, & Lynch, 2018). This is true and I believe that we need to work on digital equity in order to get rid of this problem.
Digital divide is spread across everywhere in this world and we need to take serious action to solve this problem. One way to solve this problem is by spreading the world digital equity which is to give everyone equal access to the internet. According to Steel, there are five solutions to overcome digital divide. They are 1.Increase affordability, 2.Empowering users, 3.Improve the relevance of online content, 4.Internet infrastructure development, 5.Address gender gap in internet access (Steele, 2018). All of these solutions are the first step to take action against digital divide. We need to educate ourselves and our surrounding communities about digital equity and why that is important.
References :
http://www.digitaldividecouncil.com/top-five-digital-divide-solutions/