COVID-19 prompts action to bridge America’s digital divide

Observing from afar in Australia, I’ve been quite surprised that the United States government hasn’t adopted much stronger measures to deal with the worsening COVID-19 crisis in the country. For example, why haven’t more strict lockdowns been implemented? These have proven to be very effective¹ at controlling the spread of the coronavirus here and in a number of other countries.

From posts and comments on social media, many of my friends and colleagues hold similar views. Indeed, public opinion research² from the United States Studies Centre found that Australians are much more supportive of lockdowns, with two-thirds saying that the measures are “about right,” whereas just 36% of Americans say the same.

However, as we’ve previously alerted³ in RealKM Magazine, COVID-19 is a wicked problem for policy makers as the complexity of the pandemic transcends health, environment, social, and economic boundaries. Further, we’ve also alerted⁴ that polarised debates can be the result of rational deliberation by rational people.

Sure enough, if we start to explore the social complexity of lockdown measures, we can begin to understand why there are large differences in the level of support for this approach between the United States and Australia.

Research⁵ conducted by BroadbandNow reveals that approximately 13% of Americans don’t have a reliable internet connection. While the overall “digital divide” statistic for Australia is almost identical, with Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) household technology use data⁶ showing that 14% of Australians don’t have an internet connection at home, the difference in rural areas is much larger.

A Pew Research study⁷ found that 37% of rural Americans have no internet connection at home, whereas the ABS household technology use data shows that 23% of those in remote or very remote parts of Australia don’t have an internet connection at home. Further, around 20% of the population of the United States lives in what is defined as rural America⁸, whereas just 2.3% of the population of Australia lives in what is defined as remote or very remote Australia⁹.

On top of this, the ABS household technology use data shows that for Australia households with children aged under 15 years, 97% had access to the internet. This suggests that Australians who need access to the internet can arrange that access, but as the Freethink video above shows, this isn’t the case for many Americans. When people who can’t access the internet even if they want to are forced into lockdown, then working or attending school remotely from home becomes a serious challenge, if not impossible. So it’s no wonder that many would oppose the lockdown approach.

However, as the Freethink video and accompanying article show, COVID-19 has kickstarted initiatives to bridge this digital divide.

Video and article source: With thanks to Freethink.

References:

Also published on Medium.