The Digital Divide and Mini Class Research on Internet Consumption

     In this era of information technology and that being plugged to the internet 24/7 is a norm, it is very hard to imagine a society that still has no access to such widespread technology today. This is a valid assumption since penetration of the internet has increased to such a huge scale nowadays. Digital divide takes on a dichotomous view that people either have or have no access to the internet. It asks the question of who is able to find connection to the internet. It is an undeniable truth that there are societies out there still who have no privilege of access, with an estimate of more than 4 billion people much of this are due to problems of affordability and the state of the infrastructure in certain areas (Luxton, 2016). However, with how much the internet penetration has seeped its way into crevices of society and is still continuing to rise, will this notion of digital divide remain being relevant in years to come?

 Photo taken from teennews1.

     

     According to a paper written by DiMaggio and Hargittai (2001), of which this blog entry has much referred to, even the word access should be re-assessed. See, access is usually meant to refer to ‘use’ in which DiMaggio and Hargittai (2001) states is unfortunate as there are studies of access and extent of internet use that indicated there are actually more people who have access than use it. Therefore, instead of using access as to mean ‘who is able to find connection to the internet?’ it should be ‘what is it that people do and able to do when they go online?’.

     With that in mind, we carried out a mini research among our course mates to see what is it they do when they connect to the internet. The questionnaire consisted of three sections that inquired their demography, new media ownership and their internet consumption. 58 questionnaires were handed out whereby the raw data gathered were then organized into pie charts for easier analysis.

Summary of the result and analysis

     Of the 58 who answered to our questionnaires, 46 were females and the remaining 12 were males. Majority of them (28 students) stayed in the university’s residential colleges. 57 students said they own smart phones, with laptops just a few numbers behind of being highest (51 students) in new media ownership. When they did go online, 35 students admitted to accessing their social media under the ‘very often’ category. Going online for academic purposes had the second highest number (24 students) under the same category. Most answered ‘5-10 hours’ as the amount they spend online per day and had the highest amount of respondents (25 students) choosing ‘9pm-12am’ for their most preferred time to go online. Under the question of which internet connection they relied on most when going online, subscribed telco data got the highest amount of being chosen (42 students).

     Getting something that is ultimately conclusive about internet access from these results is quite difficult due to the simplistic nature of the questions but what is apparent from the results is that these students have various access points within the campus perimeter. Their access is further widened by them owning smart phones that allow connection to any open Wi-Fi available. The amount of time spent going online as well as their purpose for going online in the first place shows just how much of communication done by these students is online which could possibly reflect the general society today. It is also interesting to note that despite the Wi-Fi available in the campus, more seem to opt for subscribed data as their choice for internet connection. This could be due to a number of reasons, ranging from security to reliability but one thing’s for sure, their access to the internet now is anywhere where their phone is, limited only by network coverage differing based on geographic areas and of course whether or not the subscription is paid on time. Internet access is literally already right at the palm of our hands and it will only be a mater of time that everyone around the world can experience the same. 

References

DiMaggio, P. & Hargittai, E. (2001). From the ‘Digital Divide’ to `Digital Inequality’: Studying internet use as penetration increases. Retrieved from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/ 4843/610b79d670136e3cdd12311f91f5cc98d2ee.pdf

Luxton, E. (2016). 4 billion people still don’t have internet access. Here’s how to connect them. Retrieved from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/05/4-billion-people-still-don-t-have-internet-access-here-s-how-to-connect-them/