I think age is a very important factor affecting a lot of types of digital dive, for example, the democratic divides. In Norris article, a lot of cyber-optimists claim that the interactive capacities of digital technologies will enable a wider audience of citizens to participate in direct democracy (Norris, 2008). If we take this into consideration, in fact there is a possibility of widening digital divide between the younger generation and the older generation. Let’s take a look at Singapore again. There already exists a great digital divide between just the penetration rates between the two age groups. If younger people, those “haves” who consist of the higher rate, keep engaging in civil democracy through the Internet, the older generation will be more and more left out. Therefore, I think age directly affects the digital divide, and can sometimes reinforce deeper divisions between information rich and poor (Norris, 2008).
The reason that I believe age is a significant factor in studying and bridging digital divide is two folded. On one hand, I have claimed in my essay that age plays an important role of causing digital divide in different countries. Economic status might have affected the penetration rate, which contributes to the physical digital divide, however, nowadays it’s not very concerned in developed countries anymore. On the other hand, age is directly related to secondary digital divide that it could possibly widen the divide culturally, economically and socially. As talked earlier, we can see that age could have a huge impact in widening the democratic divide. In general, I think it is because the pure fact that the world is aging. If we don’t do anything about this, there are going to be more and more people who turn into the generation of information have-nots naturally. Therefore, it’s vital that we come up with solutions to help bridge the digital divide between different age groups.
References:
Norris, P. (2008). The digital divide.
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