Diversity

A basic human right — the ability to fully participate in modern life via affordable, reliable, high-speed internet service — remains out of reach for many. The Biden administration recently announced it had reached agreements with 20 leading internet providers, covering more than 80 percent of Americans, to provide households eligible for the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) high-speed internet plans for no more than $30 a month. But are those that can receive the benefit getting what they need to enroll?

The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced it has awarded nine grants as part of the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program. These grants, totaling more than $7.7 million, are being awarded in six states – Alaska, California, Louisiana, South Carolina, Oklahoma, and Washington. These grants will fund projects that promote high-speed internet use and adoption that will enable communities to access and fully utilize resources that will connect them to education, healthcare, employment and more.

More Californians are gaining access to broadband internet, but Black and Latino households still lag behind their white counterparts, according to an analysis of the latest available American Community Survey data. The Public Policy Institute of California, which recently presented the findings, noted that the US Census Bureau survey paints a picture of expanding but unequal access to high-speed internet service in the state at a time when reliable internet service became a necessity for remote work and school.

This paper documents home Internet access, types of Internet access, connection speeds, and prices for basic home Internet in tribal areas of the United States. It finds that the share of households with Internet access is 21 percentage points lower in tribal areas than in neighboring non-tribal areas.

YouTube videos viewed by children do not reflect the ethnic diversity of young children, tweens, and teens across the United States. In videos watched by young children, portrayals of BIPOC characters are disproportionately negative when compared to White characters. In videos watched by 0- to 8-year-olds, Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) character portrayals were shallow or missing almost three-quarters of the time.

It’s hard to look anywhere in the broadband industry today and not hear about digital inclusion. One big reason for this is the two giant grant programs created by Congress in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to tackle digital equity issues. The first is the State Digital Equity Capacity Grant Program, that will allocate $1.5 billion to the States for this program – that’s $300 million per year from 2022 through 2026. The second is the Digital Equity Competitive Grant Program.

Even prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, some teens faced problems completing their homework because they lacked a computer or internet access at home – a phenomenon often referred to as the “homework gap.” And as students

Much media and industry attention has been focused on the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program since Congress passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and for good reason. The $42.5 billion BEAD program alone accounts for the majority of the $65 billion in broadband funding the IIJA allocated to fuel broadband projects across the country. But Tribal communities are set to get their own dedicated influx of broadband funding, with money expected to flow in the coming months.

While the pandemic presented obstacles for many students during the 2020-21 school year, the Government Accountability Office (GAO)’s nationwide survey of public K-12 teachers showed that teachers with certain vulnerable student populations were more likely to have students who faced significant obstacles to learning and an increased risk of falling behind academically. Teachers reported that students encountered obstacles to learning including difficulty in getting support, a lack of appropriate workspaces, and a lack of tools for learning.

Digital inequities allow the digital divide to thrive in the most under-resourced communities. Proof of inequity rarely surfaces in isolation and has a compound effect by multiplying the impact of disadvantage. This research was designed to explore three primary questions. First, is there a predominant race and socioeconomic class of the populations most frequently impacted by the digital divide? Second, does the digital divide impose a collective cost that is shared with digitally disadvantaged and connected households? Third, should investing in digital equity be a national priority?