“The term digital divide was coined in the mid 1990’s in the adversarial atmosphere underlying the issue of whether regulation should be built into the Telecommunication Act of 1996 to offset market forces arising with the new information infrastructure.” (Internet Access and the Digital Divide, 2001) Digital Divide means the separation of people with access to computers and the Internet and people without access. There are some people who have the best technology available to them and then there are the groups of people that for one reason or another don’t have access to the best computers. The difference between these two groups is defined as the Digital Divide. Raising the level of digital access is a very important national goal because the individuals who are left behind in cyber space will have less of an opportunity to take advantage of the information based world in which we now live. They will be at a disadvantage in higher education and on a job search. The difference between boys and girls performance has been called the gender gap. As parents and teachers, it is a huge responsibility to make sure our females don’t get left behind on the information highway.
The phrase Digital Divide actually raises more questions than it answers:
How bad is the Digital Divide?
Whom does the Digital Divide affect?
Where is the Digital Divide most seen?
What are schools doing to close the Digital Divide?
What is the government doing to close the Digital Divide?
Why is there a Digital Divide?
What are the long-term effects of the Digital Divide?
What should be done about the Digital Divide?
While we will touch on some of these topics below, the focus of this paper will be how the Digital Divide effects girls.