America: The Growing Digital Divide
A new study (pdf) published by the Pew Internet & American Life Project has found that there is a growing digital divide across America. — John B. Horrigan's analysis of America's use of Web 2. and information and communications technology …
Context & Ripple Effects
This study lands on top of a measurable shift in who was online: Washington Post reporting in late 2005 found women had narrowed the internet gender gap, evidence that broad demographic gaps were closing even as adoption spread. What Horrigan's new Pew analysis adds in May 2007 is a different cut — not how many Americans use information and communications technology, but how unevenly they use the participatory, Web 2.0 layer on top of basic access.
That matters because 2007 is when Web 2.0 tools stop being a niche hobbyist activity and become a mainstream way of publishing, organizing, and communicating. If the divide is growing at exactly this moment, the people being left out are excluded not just from reading the web but from contributing to it.
First-order effects
- John B. Horrigan's analysis reorients the Pew Internet & American Life Project's measurement agenda from raw adoption counts toward depth and kind of use, giving broadband providers and policymakers a sharper map of who is connected and who is not.
Second-order effects
- Internet service providers and consumer technology vendors get a data-backed case for targeting whatever offline segments the study identifies, since a growing divide marks where the remaining pool of unconnected US users sits.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, participatory web services whose value depends on broad user contribution will draw their audiences disproportionately from already-connected households, making access — not interest — the binding constraint on Web 2.0 adoption.
The trend: As US internet adoption matures, the meaningful question shifts from how many Americans are online to which Americans participate in the interactive web.