The year 2020 was the time when we approached our lives entirely differently because the COVID-19 pandemic ensured that we were staying in our houses months at a time and learning, working, and communicating with one another via a screen. Online work is here to stay, with many companies blending it with in-person roles. But not everyone can connect, showing the ongoing Digital Divide—in 2010, 2.6 billion people were still offline.
People lack access to Internet, a data according to a study by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN). Digital divide is the inequality of access to the Internet and ICT. The usage of internet is 70 percent in males and 65 percent in females in the year 2023. This disparity grows even more systematic when discussing the wide-ranging scope of the term regions: in India, 47.6 percent of residents live offline as of the first month of 2024.
What is digital equity?
Whereas this number will be only 10 percent in Europe, the Commonwealth of Independent States, and the Americas. The figures also outline the technological divide between some nations and the rest when the rest of the world awaits the huge roll-out of 5G because 3G and 4G networks already permeate nearly every nook and cranny of the world.
The educational economical, and social opportunities of new technologies. Rather, that crack still exists today even though there is an overwhelming commercialization of electronic gadgets that connect to the Internet. The reasons may be as simple as the expensiveness of the said devices or lack of information on how to use them all the way to the infrastructure gap on access to them.
Why is digital equity important?
In this regard, we are going to look at the kinds of digital divide: A few years back, the ITU developed Digital Access Index (DAI) which serves as a measurement of the general capacity of the citizens of any nation to have access and use ICT. This index considers different variables under five categories whose details are as follows: quality, infrastructure, knowledge, accessibility and usage. This is what we often witnessed with the COVID-19 pandemic.
When lots of students and workers had troubles with teleworking and taking online classes. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown the need to eliminate technology divides between different social groups and equip them with the needed means and skills. It is a necessary procedure to safeguard the people at most risk, either we are mentioning about the aged, children.
Causes of digital inequities
Family in danger of social exclusion. Digital divide does not offer a unique definition with one meaning agreed on among people. Digital divide is the disparity between the access, use or the effect of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) between the social brackets. Out of the various categories of digital divide that exist, access digital divide is one of the most prevalent ones. It talks about the opportunities that individuals enjoy in getting access to this resource.
The differences here refer to the social economic factors affecting persons and countries. The usage gap that consists of deficiency in the digital skills to use technology is the other most popular variety of digital divide. The international telecommunications union (ITU) which is a specialized agency in the United Nations (UN) has noted that as at the end of 2019, 40 countries existed in which half of the population was unaware of how to connect a file in an email.
Conclusion
Some of the issues, like the fact that there is a pre-existing division between the digital and older people, have been worsened by the pandemic as people were isolated in order to lessen the effects of undesired loneliness, Joaqun Perez, the head of the Senior Citizens Area at the Red Cross remarks. According to him, we have realized that devices need to be available and accessible to everyone and in addition how connectivity and technical expertise are required to use such devices.
The inability of these people to arrive at the platforms or receive benefits that they require is caused by the digitalization of many processes and services, which makes them even more exposed and isolated. It is also an important factor in the lack of digital skills that also determines the situation in education among children and completing documents and the functioning.