The New Digital Divide

Rima Shore’s article The Power of Pow! Wham!: Children, Digital Media and out Nation’s Future introduced a concept that was new to me: “the new digital divide.” Previously, when I heard or read the term “digital divide”, I thought in terms of unequal access to technology such as computers, internet connections, video cameras, video game consoles, software and so on. The Kaiser Family Foundation report that we read for this week focused entirely on inequalities in access to technology.

According to Shore, however, access to technology is only half of what is important to a child’s ability to develop digital literacy. Equally important is access to a range of experiences supported by caring adults, or “adult scaffolding”. She reports that research suggests that the social impact of digital media hinges not on the technology but on the circumstances and context in which they are used. Children need conversations and experiences with adults to provide the context for their digital(and traditional print, too, for that matter) literacy development. The term “new digital divide” refers to inequalities in access to supportive adult scaffolding.

This concept served as a reminder to me that along with access to technology, kids still need what they have always needed: adults who care about them and spend time with them and talk with them. As someone going into public library work, I think this is an idea that I need to keep firmly in the center of my thinking. I remember at the beginning of my youth services class (taught by our own wonderful Carol Tilley) we talked about our memories of librarians we had grown up with. Many of the strongest memories people had was of the librarian who had taken the time to know them and teach them and introduce them to books that had been important in their lives. Nowadays we may be introducing kids to great databases, showing them how to save and print documents, or teaching them how to find and evaluate websites as well as connecting them with the perfect book, but it is still that personal connection that can have a huge impact in a child’s life.

I think it’s important to remember that children may need more from me than access to some technology or instruction in how to use it. They may need to talk about what they are doing and seeing on the computer, or they may just need to talk about what is happening in their world. This suggests to me that drop-in and hang out type programs may just as valuable to kids as programs designed to teach specific skills. In looking for ways to stretch a shoestring budget, maybe just providing an after school space where kids can do homework, use computers, play games or have access to simple craft materials and staffing it with a librarian who is not busy trying to do anything other than be available to help out or chat would be a way to begin to bridge the “new digital divide.”