Causes And Consequences Of The Digital Divide

Register to read the introduction… The 21st century has not hindered concern surrounding this digital divide within international agencies such as the United Nations Development Program (Norris 2000). The disparities between developing societies and advanced are considered to be increasing and gap widening. This lends itself to putting countries at an economic advantage or disadvantage, leading to many flow-on effects. Poorer nations such as India, Africa, and southern parts of Asia have been in large, unable to invest in the internationally growing technologies, which would allow their nation to have and maintain Internet access, due to the initial start up investment necessary (Reference). A country not having Internet access in today’s digital age leads to a number of economic consequences. This can be highlighted through; schools being unable to educate or teach students IT skills, preventing them from taking advantage of the huge amounts of information accessible through the web. Therefore people are not growing up with the skills required to get ahead or keep up with this digital era. Ultimately this lack of IT skills results in the inability to compete within the global market or at an international level. Contrasting to this, richer countries are taking advantage of these advancing ICTs, benefiting from more highly trained people who will ultimately lead to higher economic growth (reference). At a fundamental level, this concept illustrates the significant consequences for countries without access to the ICTs and the way in which the revolution of these has allowed developed countries to gallop ahead of those developing who still lack access. In correlation to this divide, at the disadvantage of the poor, the rich get …show more content…
As Information communication technologies advance, basic assess becomes cheaper and more widely accessible. An example of this can be illustrated through the likes of South America. During the year of 2000 South America had a approximately only one in ten people online. This is contrasting to 2012’s figures, which estimate 48.2% on the population engaging with Internet penetration (http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats2.htm 2012). Furthermore, worldwide Internet users jumped from 1 billion in 2005, to approximately 2 billion in 2010. This trend is through numerous factors including; the spread of mobile phones with web capabilities, cheaper technologies, the growth and range of internet providers, and adoption of government investments within digital industries (reference). Though there are still countries with entrenched digital exclusion such as Africa, which has a mere 15.6%, online penetration, changes shown through the likes of South America, confirm that accessibility enhancement is occurring in a global dimension. The divide in this sense is continuing to widen between countries without access but narrowing in relation to the amount of countries and regions in which this is happening