note: There is likely to be a lot of typos and poor grammer, this post it yet to be proofread.

What is Digital Literacy?

Digital access is not just having the physical accessiblity to a computer or a high speed internet, not as we have seen cultural knowledge also play a role and on top of that digital literacy play a role. In the topic of digital access I wanted to answer the what does the disparity in digital literacy between different demographics here in the USA look like. Even more importantly I wanted to look at; What affects does it have on the communities that lack digital literacy and computer knowledge/skills.

Well first let's start by trying to define digital literacy. From my experience digital literacy is the ability to effectively navigate and understand digital services, resources, and content. But I believe it goes a bit further then that, I think computer knowledge is also an important topic that is overlooked, being able to simply navigate on a computer properly and do simple tasks, like creating folders, installing programs, knowing how to change your computer setting. This is very similar to the definition from the American Library Association (ALA).

Disparity in Demographic

With this better understanding of what is digital literacy is, I wanted to try and find out the disparity within the US. for information with the US, the NCES was the best source on data about digital literacy. The NCES is the National Center for Education Statistics. They create conduct wide studies on digital literacy (I will call it DL from here on) on a wide range of demographics. on of there main study is the International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS), in which they access the capabilities of 8th-grade students.

While conducting my search I also ran into a lot of other organization that held study on internet access and DL. These large international organization include the World Bank organization and the Center for Strategic and International Stuides (CSIS). The World Bank has been a proponent of increasing digital access in other parts of the world. They're goal is to further integrate the economies of other countries together, and with technology being increasing important in the economic setting, we can see why they would be very interest. From both the NCES and from other articles, it's clear that the disparity is general demographics is constant; age, geography, and income level all being some of the most important factors.

Found Results

DL is directly connected to the access people have to technology, this not only includes having a computer or laptop but also having access to high speed internet. While internet speed have greatly increased over the past decade, there is still a large amount of people in rural US that don't have a stable connection or access (Curtis, Megan E et al 2022). This study also shows the different in digital access between income and race. Indigenous, black, and Hispanics tend to have the least amount of access, and the results they will also tend to have the lowest DL levels seen in the figures above.

While race, geography, and income affect the physical access and therefore DL, there is also a very strong disparity between ages. From my findings, above the age of 60+ there is large drop in comparison to younger people around college age. Older people tend to report lower in DL (Hussain, N. et al 2024), I think this is probably linked to a lack of interest in new new technology, or interest in internet culture. One such survey found that less then one quater of peole above 65 knowledge or have good awareness on deepfakes or LLM's (Large Language Models) like ChatGPT or DeepSeek, more info can be found at Statista. Lastly, I think it's important to recongize that there is a connect between the demographics mentioned. Latinos and Black people will have on average lower income, which reduces access, lower access means lower DL levels. Next we'll try to discuss the effects that digital literacy have.

Impact of Digital Literacy

Why should we care if some people do not know how to use technology? Well, because as the technology becomes more integral to the functionality of our society, it's important that we don't leave other marginalized groups of people behind. Technology has become a crucial aspect in the health industry, education sector, banking/economy, and for most people a part of our daily life with social media.The health industry uses digital services to provide infomration to indiviuals however it requires both access and knowledge for it to be an effective tool, and lower income groups tend to both need more medical help and have lower DL. This overlap is refered to as Health Literacy by the National Institute of Health (NIH.)

The other two main impacts of DL that I found where it's affect on education and with job employment. In a study which assesed medical student they found that there was a correlation between digital literacy, academic procrastination, and academic self-efficacy (Yuan, X., et al 2024). They account this disparity to the increase of digital tools in education and within the medical field, suggesting DL give students an advantage and helps them overcome procrastination. DL however does not just benefit people in higher education there is a lot of research that showing that being knowledgabl with technology increase your job opportunities. For some of us more tech savy people we can often overlook how much we use digital tools in our profession or school that it's we can forget that they are learned skills that are not universal at all. The National Skills Coallition (NSC) and the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta conducted an analysis on digital skill demands in the labor market Closing the Digital Skill Divide. In the analysis they found that over 90% of jobs required some level of digital skills, like sending emails while about a third of laborer have no or very little DL. Digital literacy will only become more important in the United States and with the steps being made with AI it's not hard to see some possible negative effect it could have on those being left behind.

Discussion

Putting both things togther what can we learn. Well, first that there is a big gap in DL between different groups in people. Race, geography, income, and age are the biggest indicators, in some areas marginalized groups can very large disparties in both digital access and digital literacy. Secondly, we saw that DL is an important skill to have, and it will only become more important. DL affect your access to medical care and/or information, it can affect your education confidence, and it's almost guarranteed to affect your profession career. From here we can see how marginalize groups will tend to have lower DL which then in turns can affect their health, education, and employment this further increase the chances that they don't gain digital literacy skills. There are other factors at play which affect all of these categories, here in US many people still need to deal with racism, sexism, and xenophobia the difference in digital skills between these demographics will only exacerbate inequality.

looking foward in the future what can we do? Any suggestion? Well a lot of the articles and journals have proposed idea that may help. One thing we can work on improving is getting people in more rural communities connected to stable higher speed internet, as well as provide the technology like computers, laptop, and computers. But it's having acess it not enough although a vast majority of people in US have internet, their is still a large amount of poeple with little or no digital skills. which is there we can look at incorporating DL course and programs into our education. Digital literacy training can be very effective, but it is not commonly utilized, a lot of univerisy and public school don't offer or require student to take any training on how to use technology or it's given little emphasis. Of course all of this is much easier said then done, but it's a nessecary action we have to take to prevent further inequality, among social, and ecomonic demographics.

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Bibliography

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Afterword / Further Reading

Thank you for reading this haphazardly put together article I appreciate your time ☺. I do want to have a disclaimer that while I did conduct research and provide reference for most of my claims, I believe it's important to conduct your own research, I mentioned a lot of resources and will provide even more below. It's important to arrive at your own conclusions.

Now if you somehow found your way here and you are not a part of my DTC class, then I further salute you for making it to the end (assuming you read it.) I am new to making html and css, my background is in mechanical engineering which explains the visual style (or lack thereof) of the website. Please stick around I plan to create more post, and thank you again.

CSIS Digital Literacy Imperative:

Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) created a nice article from a CSIS Brief in 2022. They are an international org, and this was about improving digital literacy in different parts of the world. They mention USAID but that got shut down soooo.... yeah

Northstar Digital Literacy Assessments:

Northstar is a program in Minnesota dedicated to digital literacy. They provide assessment free on their website to try to help job seekers who may lack DL skills.

Third Way - America's Digital Divide:

Third Way is a ‘national think tank’ with ‘modern center-left ideas.’ They focus a lot on informational awareness for climate, education, politics, economy and so on. I think this is a very well put together article and where I Found the graphs for the Demographics.

World Bank Report 2023:

This is a very in-depth report. I was only able to skim some of it but they are very indepth. I will say the focus of the world bank suprise surprise is getting more laborers in the IT sector. And while yes, more employment opportunities are likely a overall good it’s also important to remember that the affect of international labor importing and exporting are very complex and often benefit peripheral countries much less. Regardless, this is a good report.