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Digital Equity: The Solution to the Digital Divide

The Digital Divide "describes the disparity that exists among individuals and communities around the world with varying degrees of access to digitally mediated information and communication technologies (ICTs) and ability to benefit from digital resources" (Pazurek & Feyissa, 2015). This means that the Digital Divide exists as a limitation to equal access to digital resources, learning and communication. The Digital Divide exists throughout socioeconomic classes, and further separates those in lower classes from those in higher classes.

Digital Equity "is a condition in which all individuals and communities have the information technology capacity needed for full participation in our society, democracy and economy" (National Digital Inclusion Alliance). Where there is Digital Equity, there is equal access to digital resources, learning and communications regardless of class, race, gender, age or other discriminatory categories. Digital Equity is what is being done to fight against the Digital Divide.

This video from Learning.com explains how they’re tacking this issue. 

The Digital Divide and Digital Equity are related to each other because Digital Equity is the work that is being done to decrease the Digital Divide. This means that when Digital Equity is truly achieved, the Digital Divide will not exist. Equity to the internet, digital media, social media and other online resources means anyone anywhere can have access, which is important for general equity in life across the globe. Socio-economic disparities create this inequity across the globe, and "we must tackle socio-cultural differences, we must focus on Internet skills, literacies and social media usage" (Radovanovic, 2011). By focusing on eliminating the Digital Divide, socio-cultural differences can be just differences, not disadvantages.

Being digitally inequitable leads to misunderstanding of others and the world around us. Exclusion from the conversations and communities online only creates a further gap between people in society. Those most at a disadvantage here are people of color at or below the poverty line, and "the digital divide will continue to be another way that poor students of color are placed at a disadvantage" (Lynch, 2017). This makes this issue crucial, especially considering the other disadvantages poor students of color already face, such as incarceration, shorter lifespan and cultural discrimination. If we can create a society where Digital Equity is more prevalent that the Digital Divide, then these disadvantages can eliminated. Digital Equity is a social justice issue that starts as early as the classroom. Common Sense Media believes there are 4 Ways to Improve Digital Equity in Your Classrooms, which can be the first step to fighting the Digital Divide. 

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Digital Citizenship

Digital Citizenship is the active engagement in a digital community for the betterment of that community. It is not only using a digital platform for good, but encouraging others to do the same. Josie Ahlquist writes "digital citizenship is responsible technology use" (Ahlquist, 2014). This means just using a platform is not enough to be a citizen. Digital citizens are ethical, and "digital citizenship is rooted in the longstanding concern over computer ethics" (Xu, Yang, MacLeod, & Zhu, 2018). Digital citizenship is centered around the idea that platforms should be used create and share, not to demean or negate.

Digital literacy is a portion of digital citizenship, and digital citizenship does not occur without first having digital literacy. Digital literacy is the understanding of a platform and information, while digital citizenship is using a platform to share information to a community. To put simply, digital literacy is knowing the information and digital citizenship is sharing the information. While digital literacy can exist on its own, digital citizenship cannot exist without digital literacy.

Digital citizenship can be fostered in adult learners by teaching the concept throughout social media platforms. For adult learners who are users of social media, understanding the responsibilities of being a digital citizen is arguably more important than the content on the platform. Promoting an understanding of digital citizenship can be done by educators by teaching the concept early on. Digital citizenship lessons in grade school can lead to responsible participation on social media later on. Then, when the user is digitally literate and participating in the community, it is their responsibly to uphold the community's ethical and moral standards.

Some of these responsibilities are simply outlined in this video:

Laura Bianco also asserts digital citizens have rights, in addition to responsibility. These rights include the right to privacy, access and privacy (Bianco, n.d.). All of these rights rely on other digital citizens to uphold their responsibilities.

Vicki Davis outlines the "9 Key Ps" of being a digital citizen, some of which include passwords, private information, personal information, and protection (Davis, 2017). These four concepts specifically center around the idea of security, and are important aspects of upholding ethics while being a digital citizen. Read about the other 5 concepts in this article.

Being a Digital Citizen is more than just using social media. Being ethical and equitable are two aspects of digital citizenship that are absolutely essential.

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Social Media & Participatory Culture

Participatory culture is defined as "a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices. A participatory culture is also one in which members believe their contributions matter, and feel some degree of social connection with one another" (Jenkins, Puroshotma, Clinton, Weigel, & Robison, 2009). Overall, a participatory culture is one that encourages contribution and expression, while also creating and sharing relevant information. Information that is considered relevant is decided by each user, which is why participatory culture theory relates to social media. Social media is a participatory culture because it cannot exist as it does without user contribution. If there was to be no user contribution, social media would return to being just a form of standard media, where information is presented to be taken in, not interacted with.

Personally, I am motivated to participate online because it is a way to stay connected with others and share stories. I love seeing what my friends are doing, especially during the distance of a pandemic. Online, I share photos of me and my friends, short videos of interesting things happening in my life, and re-share funny or important information. I am also the Director of Social Media for a University of Minnesota student organization, the Sport Management Association. For that social media, I create content for our members, share meeting information and follow-ups, and interact with other users. This professional use of social media combines my personal passion for social media, and my professional passion of sports. 

Through his reference to Spider-Man, Jenkins says in his TedTalk that this generation has more power in their hands than any other generation before (Jenkins, 2010). This is because of the participatory culture created by social media. Before social media, news was only interacted with in post-publication. Now, however, a user themselves can be the one sharing breaking news. This is a major development in how users participate with media, because there is no longer a gap in power of who can share news.

This also relates to the idea of the speed of activism. While rapid news sharing can be mostly beneficial to users,  "with instant messaging services like Twitter, news can be disseminated so rapidly that it bypasses normal editorial control, potentially leading to incorrect and misleading reports" (Hinton & Hjorth, 2013). This means that false information could be spread faster than it could be proven wrong, which can cause major user doubt and unrest. One way to solve this would be to enforce ethical standards on social media, but would bring up the other issue of social media, which is censorship. Hinton and Hjorth bring up important talking points about user retaliation to censorship in China. While censorship could help regulate truth on these platforms, the strict censorship of media in China and other countries ultimately results in users finding other ways to influence the participatory culture.

Participatory culture theory asserts that users control the narrative, and in the case of social media, this is especially true. Users and platforms work dependently to support social media standards, but it is clear users can survive the ages without these platforms, while the platforms themselves cannot.

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Social Media Effects

Social media is all around us, so what are we getting from it?

Check out this graphic for some quick stats on social media today:

The main and most important finding from Common Sense Media and the Pew Research Center says that social media has been and will continue to be on the rise. This means that teens’ and adults’ experiences with social media will only continue to increase. Both positive and negative effects will increase with the number and frequency of different social media platforms. This could mean that teens’ and adults’ experiences will become less significant with the increase. This could be either a good or bad thing based on how we develop as a society around evolving social media. This evolution and phenomenology of social media has to be studied in the present, since social media is not a short term evolution.

The ninth key finding from Common Sense Media stands out the most to me as a positive effect of social media. This finding states that “social media is an important avenue of creative expression for many teens” (Common Sense Media, 16) and that “using social media for creative expression appears to be especially important to the most vulnerable teen social media users” (Common Sense Media, 16). This fact is especially relevant to the current pandemic because of the lack of face-to-face interaction and normalcy. For all teens, and especially vulnerable teens, creative expression has a direct influence on general wellbeing. Having multiple social media outlets for expression is overall a crucial positive effect of social media.

Another positive effect of social media is connectedness. The Pew Research Center findings mention that “LinkedIn remains especially popular among college graduates” (Pew Research Center). This finding is particularly relevant to me as a Senior in college and as someone who has seen firsthand the benefits of social media, especially LinkedIn. This, and many other platforms, provide a sort of connectedness that is newly available. This connectedness can lead to better communication between friends and family and, as I’ve experienced, more opportunities in professional life.

Two of the most common negative effects presented by Common Sense Media are loneliness and depression. In the same article, two other examples mentioned are feelings of being left out or excluded and cyberbullying. One common trend that I’ve seen as a user of social media is that while these negative effects are hard to avoid, the ease of being able to separate and in person and online life helps to distance yourself from these negative effects. While there is the ability to simply turn off a smartphone, these negative effects can still do great damage to those who do not recognize and separate from them.

The Pew Research Center source mentioned that “the median American uses three of these eight social platforms” (Pew Research Center). To me this is interesting and surprising based on my own experience with social media. Personally, I can name more than even the eight platforms mentioned here that I use at least once a day. I believe this is because I am a college student and more likely to be connected on these different platforms. This statistic is surprising to me because of my own personal experience, especially because I would like to have a career in social media. Also mentioned was that over half of social media users say it wouldn't be hard to give up all social media. To me, this seems unrealistic as we do not notice how many often we are actually engaged in social media.