Broadband access in the home is a necessity, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic. Increasingly, connectivity is of vital importance for school, work, family, and friends. Existing international research on the implementation of broadband has studied its adoption patterns with a focus on the rural/urban digital divide. This paper explores the digital divide in a case study of the seventh largest city, by population, in the United States; San Antonio is a majority-minority city where over half of the people are Hispanic. This paper focuses on the five key affordability factors that drive broadband adoption. Researchers test social exclusion theory, the structural facets of poverty and social marginality to ascertain its potential impact on broadband access. The authors conducted a survey in both English and Spanish to learn more about the affordability factors that influence the broadband digital divide. Through our analysis, we found evidence that four of the factors (geographical disparities, profit-based discrimination, technology deployment cost, and socio-economic factors) played a role in the digital divide in this case study. The results of this study demonstrate that the digital divide is not exclusively a rural/urban digital divide, but can also occur in an intra-city context. This is especially evident in low-income areas within the city because they have substantially lower broadband adoption rates. The results of this study demonstrate the importance of looking closely at issues of social exclusion of marginalized groups and the affordability of broadband access intra-city.
The purpose of this study is to review the association between education and teenage pregnancy in low- and lower-middle-income countries. Teenage pregnancy deters women from achieving educational goals and from maximizing their human capital. This study was conducted using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses statement. Nine out of 4,980 articles scanned met the inclusion criteria for analysis, from 2008 to 2018. The results show reaching higher levels of education deters from teenage pregnancy in low- and lower-middle-income countries. Therefore, social work policies and programs should target access to education and school retention as a deterrence to teenage pregnancy.
Teen dating violence (TDV) challenges families because of negative effects on youths' well-being. This exploratory study examines parents' awareness of TDV and their anticipated responsesto adolescents' reports. The authors used a telephonic survey of 539 Michigan adults to assess knowledge of TDV, awareness of its prevalence, and anticipated responses. More mothers than fathers viewed TDV as a major public health problem and were likely to urge their adolescents to seek formal help. Fathers were more likely to ground their children or say that things are not so bad. Findings of demographic differences influencing parental responses can inform social workers to help parents plan for responding to TDV effectively.
COVID-19 is having an enormous impact on civic life, including public services, governance, and the well-being of citizens. The pace and scope of technology as a force for problem solving, connecting people, sharing information, and organizing civic life has increased in the wake of COVID-19. This article critically reviews how technology use influences the civic engagement potential of the smart city, in particular for people with disabilities. The article aims to articulate new challenges to virtual participation in civic life in terms of accessibility, usability, and equity. Next, the article proposes a framework for a smart participation future involving smarter communities that utilize universal design, blended bottom-up, and virtual community of practice (VCoP) approaches to planning and connecting citizens with disabilities to smart cities. Policy and ethical implications of the proposed smart participation future are considered.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.