The Teen Digital Divide

A new survey conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project looks at teens and the Internet. The results are no surprise: teens use the net in record numbers. Still, some three million teens remain without web access, most of them low-income and a disproportionate number are African American. “When so many teenagers have such access,” Susannah Stern, assistant professor of communication studies at the University of San Diego, told the Associated Press (here via Yahoo! News), “the few that don’t are at a significant disadvantage.” Further fueling this digital divide is the fact that it’s a challenge to find people to teach teens how to use the Internet.