Too uneducated to understand the importance of home Internet?

In their recent Op-Ed in the Washington Post, “Cities, not rural areas, are the real Internet deserts,” authors Blair Levin and Larry Downes argue that the digital divide in cities persists because uneducated people do not understand the importance, or “relevance,” of the internet in their everyday lives. The core argument, then, is that the digital divide, or what has been referred to as the gap between those with and those without access to the internet, is not a problem of access or cost but “a problem of education.” In other words, since “poorer, older, and less educated Americans” can access low-cost internet access through programs such as Comcast’s Internet Essentials, the affordability gap has already been bridged? Convincing these people that using the internet is beneficial, they argue, is the real challenge for digital inclusion policymakers. The authors are correct in half their argument. It is certainly true that, as they say, “the digital divide...is not exclusively or even most significantly a rural problem.” However, as we have previously written and as various academic studies on digital inequalities have shown, relying solely on survey data to examine reasons for broadband non-adoption -- and not the actual everyday experiences of low-income people -- misses the point.

[Colin Rhinesmith is an assistant professor in the Simmons University School of Library and Information Science. Bibi Reisdorf is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.]