Driving north on Kingshighway in St. Louis, I pass some of my favorite places in the city. Forest Park on the left, a sprawling, lush green sea of trees. An oasis in the middle of the urban jungle. On the right, historic architecture with ornate details contrast against modern clean-lined highrises. As I continue to drive north, the contrast becomes more apparent, but in a different way. Once I cross Delmar Blvd., the ornate historic buildings and gated communities give way to White Castle, paint-chipped signs, and dilapidated storefronts. One more block north, vacant buildings with boarded up windows and dead trees create a stark difference to the prosperity and lushness south of Delmar.
The Delmar Divide is also a digital divide. Red on the map pictured indicates neighborhoods where 51% or more of households do not have Internet access, according to data from the Census Bureau's 2013-2017 American Community Survey. The north part of the city is mostly red creating a digital desert.
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Percent of households in St. Louis with no access to the internet. Illustration by Evan Sult. Riverfront Times. Used with permission. Retrieved from https://www.riverfronttimes.com/newsblog/2019/02/11/in-st-louis-digital-divide-north-city-suffers-from-poor-internet-access
How the digital divide plays out in local communities is that companies provide high speed Internet access in geographic areas that can afford the companies’ prices. Lack of access in a geographic area affects students from under-resourced communities twice, as they may have less access at home and at school.
Another way the digital divide plays out in local communities is a gap between users’ literacy with technology. Access and digital literacy are associated because lack of access to technology and the Internet means less opportunities to practice digital literacy. Research has shown that even when the amount of computers and Internet speed were similar across schools, students from lower socioeconomic communities spent less time using technology. One reason for this could be that digital literacy is not tested on high stakes assessments tied to accreditation and funding, so time is spent instead on traditional literacy that is tested (Leu et al., 2015). A gap in digital literacy correlated with socioeconomic status is an issue of equity in education.
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