Charting and Bridging Digital Divides: Comparing Socio-economic, Gender, Life Stage, and Rural-Urban

The consumer advisory board of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. has released a study on Internet use worldwide. The study, which looks at trends in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, China, and Mexico, found that only 10% of the global population are online. 90% of Internet users are from developed countries, with a third living in the United States. In the USA (as well as in the UK and Japan), the digital divide is narrowing, but women are under-represented as Internet users in China, Germany, Italy, Korea, and Mexico. In addition, the study describes other kinds of digital divides in the countries surveyed: Germany and Italy have a "gender divide", while South Korea has an "age divide".

After tracing specific trends for each of the 8 countries, the authors offer the following reflections about the digital divide:

• Fundamentally, it is about the gap between individuals and societies that have the resources to participate in the information era and those that do not. This divide remains real worldwide"
• The diffusion of Internet use in developed countries may be stalling
• The digital divide between first-movers and latecomers among developed countries is narrowing
• The nature of this divide varies between countries
• It remains substantial between developed and developing countries
• It can widen even as the number and percentage of Internet users increases
• It is widening and deepening in developing countries
• It has profound impacts on the continuation of social inequality

They conclude that "the intersection of socio-economic status, gender, age, language, and geographic location tend to increase the digital divide in mutually reinforcing ways within, and between, countries. The largest gap is between better-educated, affluent, younger, English speaking men in developed cities and less-educated, poor, older, non-English speaking women in underdeveloped rural areas."

Click here for the full report in PDF format.