Digital Divide and Youth Development in the Early Twenty-First Century

Abstract

This chapter examines the persistence of the digital divide and its impact on youth development in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. As a global problem, the digital divide is neither an isolated phenomenon nor does it homogeneously affect communities. On the one hand, digital divide is an effect of social inequalities, and on the other hand, it deepens inequalities across geographies and socioeconomic categories. This chapter shows that research on the digital divide towards the end of the twentieth century exclusively emphasized economic inequality among users. But recent work in the twenty-first century increasingly focuses on the intersectional dimensions, studying the effects of other inequalities such as race, gender, ethnicity, geography, migration, and age on digital access, use, and outcomes. The youth is typically identified as a digitally inclined population. In the information society, their education and overall development depends on digital use and access. But among them, too, intersectional positionality determines the quantity and quality of digital access and opportunities of empowerment. Current literature on youth and the digital divide also reveals how digital access, use, and outcomes are intersectionally determined for parents, families, educators, and communities, whose support remains crucial for youth development. Further, the review suggests that online education in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic creates new challenges for the underprivileged youth by intensifying the intersectional aspects of digital divide.