Revisiting the First-Level Digital Divide in the United States: Gender and Race/Ethnicity Patterns, 2007–2012

Abstract

With the narrowing of Internet access divide, researchers have focused on Internet usage, taking for granted access issues. However, questions remain regarding who has Internet access in the United States: What is the status of the racial divide? Is there still a gender divide? How do Latinos compare to other racial and ethnic minority groups? How does gender intersect with race and ethnicity? I analyze nationally representative data to compare Internet access among adults from 2007 to 2012. I find that women are more likely to report having Internet access than men. Blacks and Latinos are equally likely to report having Internet access, and both groups are less likely to report having Internet access than Whites. Finally, Black men exhibited the greatest increase in access. This research complements Internet usage studies with a recent assessment of Internet access trends, important trends to monitor as policies and technological innovations aim for universal access.

Emerging Roles: Academic Libraries Crossing the Digital Divide

“…As the proportion of United States homes with Internet access grew during the 1990s, and with governmental goals of universal Internet access, numerous reports and studies documented the trends in access across population subgroups. These early reports documented that whites were more likely to have Internet access than other racial groups, and that this divide was a consequence of social factors such as income and educational attainment; studies also consistently showed that men were more likely to access the Internet than women (Campos-Castillo, 2014).…”

“…This was, and usually still is, measured along axes of race, gender, geography, and socioeconomic status (Campos-Castillo, 2014;Khalid & Pedersen, 2016). As the proportion of United States homes with Internet access grew during the 1990s, and with governmental goals of universal Internet access, numerous reports and studies documented the trends in access across population subgroups.…”

“…This is due to the increased adoption of smartphones capable of Internet access, and for some, particularly Hispanics (Zhang et al, 2015), this is the primary way they now access the Internet. When it comes to gender differences, the gap has actually reversed: more women now report access than men (Campos-Castillo, 2014;Khalid & Pedersen, 2016;Young, 2016). A different kind of gap still exists, however, and as dependence on technology increases, the severity of this gap will increase as well.…”

“…The social factors that maintain the digital divide are not limited to race and gender. One-third of low-income and rural K-12 students in the United States are unable to go online when at home, and 58 percent of rural households (compared with 72 percent of urban households) had broadband Internet at home (Campos-Castillo, 2014;Young, 2016). That said, recent trends in technology suggest that the first-level digital divide may soon disappear in the US.…”

ICTs for employability and empowerment : an analytical framework for addressing the digital divide in urban livelihoods

“…Within the specific terminology of digital divide itself, the concept is also constantly evolving. For example, the term was originally centred on the question of having, or not having, access to technologies (Compaine, 2001), what scholars refer to as the first-level digital divide (Campos-Castillo, 2015) or the "digital access divide" (Wei, Teo, Chan, & Tan, 2011). With a global mobile phone internet user penetration exceeding fixed broadband in 2017 (International Telecommunication Union, 2017), the concept of digital divide has evolved to consider the relative inequality between those with more or fewer skills (Hargittai, 2002).…”