What is the digital divide today?
This week’s readings prompted me to think about how the concept of the digital divide has evolved in recent years and how it takes shape today. Though written a decade ago, Boyd’s (2016) description of the lack of diversity in computer science education and its effects on oppressive, exploitative digital systems rang true, “If people don’t understand what these systems are doing, how do we expect people to challenge them?”
In my mind, there are two key components to the digital divide today. First, people are practicing sustained reading less than previous years (Bone et al., 2025; Iyengar, 2024). Significant disparities persist in reading achievement levels between racial groups, (National Center for Education Statistics, 2019). This is compounded by the fact that in many places, public library open hours are declining due to budget constraints, (Lauersen, 2025), and the price of living continues to rise, encroaching on people’s ability to pay for accurate or editorially-produced information.
Today’s most popular internet-connected devices support platforms that are designed to keep people scrolling for as long as possible to maximize ad revenue. App-based companies coerce people to see an onslaught of short form videos and images accompanied by brief texts. Much of this content provokes fear and anger, a stress response that can become addicting. People less frequently engage with longform print materials for sensemaking and entertainment and instead tend to reflexively turn to fragmented and sensationalized forms of information.
So I see one side of today’s digital divide as the lack of multiple literacies among the general public — digital as well as traditional information literacy — that are necessary to be critical, informed citizens. The other side of the issue, in my view, is the myriad of negative outcomes associated with our built information systems, primarily in the form of internet centralization, a term used to describe the consolidation of information dissemination and the internet’s physical infrastructure, (Internet Engineering Task Force, 2022). To echo Boyd’s sentiment, how can people fight the root of this problem without being able to understand what’s happening?
The two parts of the problem as I see it are reinforcing each other. To even frame the issue as having two parts is probably an oversimplification. It unevenly equates the agency of everyday people to improve their reading and computational comprehension with the consequences of entire economies and infrastructure systems. It’s more broad and complicated than what some scholars call “the digital divide,” and that’s why I’m skeptical to use that term.
It’s also why I’m skeptical of technosolutionist ideas for libraries like book vending machines or bookmobiles. Of course, this doesn’t mean that some good can come from these creative ideas. Similar to calls to fight the “digital divide” by lending out hotspots or teaching computer classes, these moves are probably not getting at the root of the problem.
So how can public libraries address people’s waning attention spans and the dumpster fire economy? I definitely do not know. The first step may be leaning into our uncertainties and admitting that we don’t know. Maybe we should stop talking about library services and programs as a silver bullet for our communities and instead recognize that there are real limits to the impact we have.
I really do not mean to be a downer this week! Part of my thinking around this issue stems from the dynamic in my department at my current library system. My goal in future weeks is to explore the role that workplace culture and management styles play in library services and programs. I think some inward reflection and learning in this realm will be insightful for me.
References
Bone, J., Bu, F., Sonke, J., Fancourt, D. (2025). The decline in reading for pleasure over 20 years of the American time use survey. iScience, 28(9).
Boyd, D. (2016). What world are we building? https://medium.com/datasociety-points/what-world-are-we-building-9978495dd9ad
Internet Engineering Task Force. (2022, July 9). Centralization, decentralization, and internet standards. https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-nottingham-avoiding-internet-centralization-05.html
Iyengar, S. (2024). Federal data on reading for pleasure: All signs show a slump. National Endowment for the Arts Blog. https://www.arts.gov/stories/blog/2024/federal-data-reading-pleasure-all-signs-show-slump
National Center for Education Statistics. (2019). Indicator 10: Reading achievement. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/raceindicators/indicator_rca.asp
Lauersen, C. (2025). The necessary nearness – an ode to bookmobiles. The Library Lab. https://christianlauersen.net/2025/02/05/the-necessary-nearness-and-ode-to-bookmobiles/
West, J. (2014). 21st century digital divide. https://www.librarian.net/talks/rlc14/
@djcrumbo Oh, it was so neat to be reminded of Boyd’s work from 2016 in this post and to think about how How these ideas might be applied to AI. It’s interesting to think about AI as something that a lot of folks don’t understand. So that makes it seem more like it’s mysterious and magic. And it would really behoove us to understand exactly how all of these LLMs come about. Once again, I think this is a good role for libraries to provide education on the origins, background, and what it means to be an ethical user of AI.