How access to technology impacts financial and social stability among socioeconomic classes.

Andrew Paulino, Brandon McCarthy-Santos, Luis Navarro

CST 462S - Race, Gender, Class in the Digital World

Brian Robertson

Fall 2022
 Navarro, McCarthy-Santos, Paulino 1

How access to technology impacts financial and social stability among socioeconomic classes.

Introduction

Technology has created many opportunities for those with the forethought to explore it.

However historically prices of computers were out of reach for the layman. “the most basic

model of an HP 3000 sold for $95,000 in 1972…” (Comen, 2018). As the latest generation of

smart phones and portable computers has brought once privileged devices into the hands of those

not privy to early access, one socioeconomic class remains slow to achieve adoption of these

technologies despite its availability. This presents a problem, as the world moves forward into

the tech-savvy future, a large demographic of people whose skill set and services were once

valued are becoming marginalized and increasingly redundant. This phenomenon has been

dubbed “The Digital Divide.” In this essay we will explore how lack of access to technology has

adversely affected individuals in the low socioeconomic class, and we shall attempt to devise

solutions to how we can end this disparity.

Literature Review

When looking at the connections of lower-income children having limited access to

technological opportunities and possibly gaining a high socio-econmic status in their futures,

questions arise about social policies that are observed today. According to the Public Policy

Institute of California who published Achieving Digital Equity for California’s Students, authors

Joseph Hayes and Niu Gao go into detail about how the lifestyle changing effects of COVID-19

have negatively impacted lower-income and minority students due to their limited access to the

Internet. (Hayes et al., 2021) Lower-income students had a 52% access rate to the Internet while

African American students had a 58% access rate and Latino students had a 61% access rate.

Given that the baseline seemed to be around 67% in 2019, it is to be inferred that these rates
 Navarro, McCarthy-Santos, Paulino 2

were below average and disportionality affected these individuals (Hayes et al., 2021). Due to

the low average rates of students having access to the Internet, it is quite obvious that there are

several gaps in the public education system regarding students having access to technology,

including the Internet.

The study done by the Public Policy Institute of California has given insight on how there

are gaps and how much these gaps actually affect future outcomes of these students beyond

grade-level schooling. An initiative that is actively attempting to mitigate this social inequality is

the No Child Left Behind campaign, which describes its goal to “diminish the digital divide

between socioeconomic class and race of students” (Hayes et al., 2021). According to the article

One to One Technology and its Effect on Student Academic Achievement and Motivation, the

authors were set to figure out if having one-on-one technology for low-income and minority

students, meaning that every child in the classroom has access to a laptop or technological device

to enable their education, is beneficial. (Harris et al., 2016) The article states that there are

notable discrepancies between those who participated in the one-on-one technology and those

who didn't. When comparing the studies between the one-on-one group and the traditional group

who did not have access to various technologies and the Internet, the one-one-one group had a

higher rating by 16.7% for academic achievement.

Diving deeper into this public issue, it is only relevant to analyze how the type of device

you own can affect your access to technology, as seen from 2020 data, it seems that 59% of

students would face “at least one of three digital obstacles to their schooling, such as a lack of

reliable Internet at home, no computer at home, or needing to use a smartphone to complete

schoolwork.” (Vogels, 2021) This ultimately concludes that there is a lack of resources being
 Navarro, McCarthy-Santos, Paulino 3

provided to low-income and minority students and their families in regards to public

technological infrastructure.

Research Question

How does lack of exposure to technology affect lower-income individuals and

minorities? The power of technology comes in an amalgamation of forms. Manifesting in

devices such as smartphones, computers, or tablets. The question presented at hand aims to

understand how tech in its different iterations influence the socioeconomic classes that aren’t

frequently exposed to it. These influences can be explored on a case study basis by interviewing

people from these groups and respective organizations that work with these classes.

Research Design

We will be conducting interviews with three separate organizations. Our main goal is to

understand the perspective of the organization, what is being given to serve lower-income

students/individuals, and what technological resources may be available to these respective

students and other individuals. We have also decided to conduct these interviews over Zoom

video calls during a two week period. During these video calls, we plan to ask the same

questions to each respective unit to gain an observational insight within each organization and

their needs.

1. What do you think causes a technical divide between lower income students and higher

income students?

2. What are some effects you have noticed that have taken place due to these technological

divides?
 Navarro, McCarthy-Santos, Paulino 4

3. Evaluating this organization’s mission statement along with the technological disparity

between lower income students and higher income students, how does this organization

plan to use its resources to combat these disparities?

4. What is the extent of familiarity to the technology necessary to run a website does your

clientele have?

5. Can you describe whether earlier exposure to the technologies that your business owners

are seeking expertise on would mitigate the need for seeking external aid?

6. What kind of resources or training does your organization provide to help bring people

from low-socioeconomic backgrounds up to speed to be competitive in the modern digital

landscape?

Service Organizations

The three service organizations we will be working with are One Community, Grey

Software, and GetVirtual. One Community serves as a multifaceted non-profit volunteer

organization and their mission and values span across from providing blueprints for

self-sustainable building plans to being an open-source for underrepresented communities in

order to provide free educational resources for students. With their support, these students can

have a self-guided way of learning. Focusing on the One Community Education branch opens

opportunities for open-source educational resources and aims to provide educational resources to

all, especially those who are underprivileged and underrepresented in the community.

GetVirtual is a non-profit organization that was founded on the premise of assisting small

businesses who were adversely affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as small business

owners who lack the necessary skills to adapt their business to an online climate. GetVirtual

helps facilitate this by connecting these businesses with volunteer students to form a web
 Navarro, McCarthy-Santos, Paulino 5

presence. A sizable portion of the business owners that have been helped already are from the

demographic that this essay targets. As such lack of access to technology has hindered many

business owners from low socioeconomic classes who don’t have the experience or access to

computers to adapt to the rapidly changing technological landscape.

Grey Software serves as a nonprofit organization with a mission to provide platform

access and education to those seeking to contribute to real world projects. Not only does Grey

software allow people to participate in open source projects, but they also provide mentorship

from experienced contributor members. Participating in Grey Software allows people to build

their skills while building applications to be freely accessible. Grey Software organization allows

people of different socioeconomic backgrounds and learning skills to participate in open source

projects at their own pace.

Findings

As we dive deeper into understanding more of the root of the problem, the interview from

One Community’s Jae Sabol proved to be insightful in many different ways. Based on the

interview, it is certain that Jae is aware of these issues of how the lack of technology has caused a

great shift within the lower-income community. (full interview transcripts are presented in

Appendix A). Jae mentioned that just within the volunteer process in his organization he has had

multiple volunteer students unable to volunteer in his organization because they do not have

adequate hardware to run the programs that require participation in the organization.

As we cross analyzed our respective service site interviews the perspective of our site

partners corroborated that there was a trend and common theme. There does exist a technological

divide that prevents members of the low-socioeconomic class from participating in organizations

meant to help them grow due to lack of resources or access to quality technological hardware.
 Navarro, McCarthy-Santos, Paulino 6

Jae has noticed this and mentioned to me that One Community is supporting the community by

providing open source educational resources to hopefully help multiply the knowledge and

strengthen the community all together. Ultimately Jae believes it is up to the community to help

support free and open-sourced initiatives to help strengthen and empower lower-income students.

Similar parallels to Jae’s perspective were discovered when interviewing GetVirtuals

founder Dan Ripke. (Full interview available in Appendix B) The recurring theme was that

earlier exposure to technology would facilitate a better understanding of the current environment

that people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds find themselves in due to lack of access to

technology, and the necessity to keep up with the pace of innovation because tech is not a trend.

Conclusions

Based on our group research, we can conclude that the digital divide does certainly exist

and there are disadvantaged people who are being left behind. Fortunately there are nonprofits

such as GetVirtual and volunteers who are willing to help bridge that gap by rendering their

knowledge and services to those desiring to learn to become more technologically proficient. As

we reflect on our interviews and findings we can see the patterns and themes becoming more and

more prevalent around our initial research question. Earlier exposure to technology would

benefit individuals that are adversely affected by the digital divide. We’ve seen from One

Community that Jae has seen this issue first hand and they are combating it by providing free

online resources for students to get more exposure to online learning resources. Based on the

findings and our research we can see how lack of technology would not benefit and even hinder

students in the future. For example, as mentioned from the interview with Jae he had several

moments when student volunteers would attempt to join his organization, but he could not have
 Navarro, McCarthy-Santos, Paulino 7

them join due to their technology that they have and it will hinder them from using the

technology intensive applications.

In conclusion, we’ve seen these themes and patterns from these interviews and we have

deduced several theories and ideals that come into play within our ideas based on our initial

research. From how COVID-19 has shown gaps within access to technology to the ever changing

world of education becoming more digital we can see how these events are creating, but at the

same time also mending these potential divides.

Recommendations

Learning from our research, it is very important for our government and our educational

system to provide the technological resources that individuals in the low-socioeconomic class

lack in order to ensure that society is able to function with the disparity among tech proficiency.

We’ve examined the effects of providing technology, not providing technology, and how that

impacts students' potential for success in the classroom. Based on the anecdotes provided by One

Community we can see that providing open source educational content is another valuable way

to help provide some technological knowledge to students who may not have traditional

knowledge of these advanced topics.

It is crucial for us to advocate for providing quality technology, especially since more and

more schools are moving towards more technology based learning. We must ensure that our

students do not face technological disadvantages due to other factors such as financial

constraints. It would be pertinent for anyone in positions of authority to write to policy makers to

allocate funding that would provide the resources necessary to enable under-privilaged people to

access technology necessary for society to continue advancing at the rapid pace it has been. It is

important that we do not alienate individuals by helping them keep up with the trends in tech.
 Navarro, McCarthy-Santos, Paulino 8

Our service programs have opened our eyes to the good that non-profit organizations can provide

and thus we recommend donating capital to non-profit’s that provide service to help alleviate the

digital divide.
 Navarro, McCarthy-Santos, Paulino 9

References

Comen, E. (2018, June 22). Check out how much a computer cost the year you were born.

USA Today. Retrieved From

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2018/06/22/cost-of-a-computer-the-year-you-were-

born/36156373/

Hayes, J. & Gao, N. (2021, August 17). Achieving Digital Equity for California's students.

Public Policy Institute of California. Retrieved from

https://www.ppic.org/publication/achieving-digital-equity-for-californias-students/

Harris, J. Al-Bataineh, M. Al-Bataineh, A. (2016). One to One Technology and its Effect on

Student Academic Achievement and Motivation. Contemporary Educational Technology.

Retrieved from

https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1117604.pdf

Vogels, E. A. (2021, September 10). Digital divide persists even as Americans with lower

incomes make gains in tech adoption. Pew Research Center. Retrieved from

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/06/22/digital-divide-persists-even-as-americ

ans-with-lower-incomes-make-gains-in-tech-adoption/
 Navarro, McCarthy-Santos, Paulino 10

Appendix

Appendix A

Interview with One Community Executive: J. Sabol

This interview was conducted over zoom and the interview was conducted with the

executive member of the One Community organization. Some questions were slightly framed in

a different way to fit the mold of the people who are being served by this organization, but

ultimately it was the same question underneath.

● What do you think would cause a technical divide between lower income students

and higher income students when it comes to technology access?

Jae stated “Lack of access, I think. Like, not enough funds to be able to afford quality Internet

connection, quality hardware, just a lack of the actual infrastructure, like physical infrastructure

access to be able to utilize technology in the same ways that higher income users would have,

right?”

● Have you ever noticed any effects taking place due to these technological divides?

Jae responded “Oh, absolutely. Because we work with people all over the world, especially with

the African volunteers from Africa. Their Internet connection is just so terrible. We even had

core team members join that we've had to put up a new rule that's like, oh man, if somebody

doesn't have a quality internet connection, we just can't have them join the team because it's so

disruptive on collaborative calls. And that's just collaborative calls that's not even working with

Google Docs and Google Spreadsheets and software and that kind of stuff. So yeah, lack of

quality Internet access is something that is definitely something that we're aware of with other

countries. We work with volunteers and great places around the world.”
 Navarro, McCarthy-Santos, Paulino 11

● Evaluating your organization's mission statement, could you find links between the

technological disparity between the lower income students and do you have any

examples of one community trying to combat these issues in some way or form?

Jae stated “We're working towards providing the content in three different platforms. Website,

which like a lot of countries can't some countries can't access our website or there are issues,

issues with the website loading too slowly, things like that. So two solutions to that are uploading

our content to YouTube, which can be more stable in some areas than others. And then of course,

there's PDF so that people can download content and then print it out as a physical copy. And

then eventually we'll create repositories so that people can just access the downloads and bypass

our website completely.”

● Given One Community does not serve business directly, I referred to directing the

question to understanding awareness of this technological divide between volunteer

individuals.

Jae mentioned “Are they aware? Yeah, I think so. I definitely communicate with people and it's

no question that is frustrating for them when their Internet connection isn't working. And they're

very apologetic about the fact it's like, I'm so sorry my Internet's not working. They're definitely

aware.”

● What kind of resources or training do you think in the future will be very crucial or

recommended to help bridge this divide?

Jae mentioned, “Resources or training? So the main thing that we're experiencing is, again, lack

of a solid Internet connection and computer hardware capable of accessing the web in such a way

that they can easily access the information that they need and be able to navigate efficiently.”
 Navarro, McCarthy-Santos, Paulino 12

Appendix B

Interview with GetVirtual Executive: Dan Ripke

This interview was conducted over zoom and with the director of GetVirtual

organization. The contents of which are transcribed below.

● What do you think causes a technical divide between lower income students and

higher income students?

Dan “Lets see, I think there are a couple barriers that cause a division. Part of it is having access

to the technology, meaning someone of lower economic means may not be able to afford to own

a smartphone or an iphone, or if they do it may be an older phone that may not be able to run the

latest software. Similarly they may not have access to a computer or an Ipad, and probably most

importantly at their home they might not have access to the internet. I think that’s the biggest

barrier because it’s an assumption in society now that everyone has access when in fact that’s not

the case. Then the other thing is there are different tiers of access. You can have access but it

might be extremely slow. You can have access enough to see a static website but you may not be

able to watch an educational video for example. Another challenge that is somewhat linked to

that is that it’s not just the child it's also the parent. In a lot of households the parents don’t

understand the internet and so they don’t prioritize it. They are just trying to put food on the

table. Getting high speed internet to the house is not something they are going to prioritize… just

having access to the technology and access to the internet are the two huge barriers”

● What are some effects you have noticed that have taken place due to these

technological divides?

Dan “I think the big thing is in this day and age, it’s the assumption we have access to the

internet and in particular streaming content. For example in classrooms a lot of times teachers
 Navarro, McCarthy-Santos, Paulino 13

share a hyperlink or a URL to educational content but if you don’t have access you can’t watch

it. Similarly textbooks now have hyperlinks, if you don’t have a computer with internet access

you can’t benefit from that. It sounds silly but even just having an older cell phone, like a flip

phone with the old thumb pad with just the numbers. I don’t know if you’ve ever had to text with

just the numbers, but it’s a slow process, and that affects you socially. Well that’s some of the

effects, lack of access to education and lack of access to your social network. ”

● Evaluating this organization’s mission statement along with the technological

disparity between lower income students and higher income students, how does this

organization plan to use its resources to combat these disparities?

Dan “Well, I think one of the things we’re trying to focus on is helping those business owners

that are not prioritizing getting themselves online, and there is a perception by for example, older

business owners that have always run their business a certain way and they’ve always been very

successful that way, so the idea of having a website or the idea of taking transactions online via

ecommerce for example is something they don’t want to embrace they think if they can resist it

long enough the trend will pass and something else will come along. When in fact you really

can’t so what we try to do at GetVirtual is to try to showcase the benefits of having a website and

that it’s really not that difficult to have one and keep it current. And so leveraging the students

that have the technological capability to build it and then can hopefully show the business

owners how to manage it moving forward. I think the business owner’s see the economic benefit

of having that kind of visibility on the web. Hopefully we can prove it. The one thing we haven’t

done, and maybe this is something we should do in the future, is ask the business owner before

the business starts working with us, take the baseline and ask them ‘Hey what’s your sales level

right now?’ and then after the website is built follow up six months later, and ask them ‘Hey

what’s your sales like now, has it improved dramatically or is it pretty much the same?’ But the
 Navarro, McCarthy-Santos, Paulino 14

big thing is getting the businesses to understand the economic benefit of having their business

look more visible as well as having an ecommerce platform. Then the other thing is appealing to

older people and letting them know that there are other ways to do it, they don’t have to do

everything themselves they can hire someone else to build up their websites and maintain it for

them”

● What is the extent of familiarity to the technology necessary to run a website does

your clientele have?

Dan “Typically none, we’ve had a few clients that try to launch a website but get bogged down,

which I totally get. As you’re getting into it you come upon barriers you may not understand, for

example how to link a url to your company name, or how to purchase a URL, or how to upload

photos. So that’s why we try to overcome those barriers by working with the business owners but

we stop short of trying to do everything for them. That’s why we are somewhat different from a

consulting firm or marketing form we don’t try take them by the hand and do everything for

them but we try to do enough to knock down barriers so they aren’t insurmountable”

● Can you describe whether earlier exposure to the technologies that your business

owners are seeking expertise on would mitigate the need for seeking external aid?

Dan “I think having earlier exposure to technology would be a benefit. If someone grew up being

exposed to websites and having some idea of how to build a simple website then obviously for

them it would be relatively easy. So yeah I do think that would be beneficial and help mitigate

that necessity.”

● What kind of resources or training does your organization provide to help bring

people from low-socioeconomic backgrounds up to speed to be competitive in the

modern digital landscape?

 Navarro, McCarthy-Santos, Paulino 15

Dan “Well i think that’s pretty much the gist of the whole program. At GetVirtual we focus on

just that, getting them from a lack of a digital presence to having some sort of digital presence.

And the idea of it being something where they don't have to pay for, they can do it entirely for

free because we provide the student to do the work. Website companies for example wix, you

can maintain a website on their platform without paying a dime. So we can do all of this at no

cost to the business owner and that lowers the barriers to help them be competitive. So

connecting business owners to the wix platform or other platforms like squarespace and

providing the basic training so they can manage their website when we are done so they can

continue to move forward with it, and we have continued to do that with several of the

companies. If they come back to us with a glitch we will help them troubleshoot what’s wrong of

course. We don’t manage the website long term. In a lot of the cases they will just go ahead and

hire the student for that. Which Is fine, I don’t have a problem with that. If they can give them a

paying job that’s great for everyone.”

 Navarro, McCarthy-Santos, Paulino 16

Appendix C

Interview with Faraz Khan

The following interview was conducted over zoom with Faraz Khan who is a founding

member and core contributor to Grey Software ecosystem.

● What do you think causes a technical divide between lower income students and

higher income students?

Faraz stated “It could be different things that are resources, early age responsibilities and lack of

information about affordable or free resources. Today, the world is moving fast and to move with

the same speed is expensive. So, again the technical division is of lack of stable Internet,

educational instruments or required devices and lack of mentoring. Further, lack of opportunities

at lower class places also make it difficult for the lower income students to start polishing and

show his skills.”

● What are some effects you have noticed that have taken place due to these

technological divides?

Faraz stated “I have met many talented geeks who have no proper roadmaps and focus. Who

don't find opportunities to work on real world problems with access to the industrial resources.

This way, we lose many talented people who change their careers and few of them hardly find

their desired place too late. It also affects one's behavior and confidence.”
 Navarro, McCarthy-Santos, Paulino 17

● Evaluating this organization’s mission statement along with the technological

disparity between lower income students and higher income students, how does

this organization plan to use its resources to combat these disparities?

Faraz stated “Grey Software considers willingness and passion instead of demographic

characteristics. Therefore, Grey Software try to work on real world problems considering

open-source concepts using open source resources. Grey Software keeps their contributors

motivated, free mentoring and for active contributors also take care of the candidates Internet

and other resources expenses.”

● What is the extent of familiarity to the technology necessary to run a website

does your clientele have?

Faraz stated “One needs to understand to perform actions following the guiding steps for our

open-source applications. Yes, our clients are technology enthusiasts and find it interesting to see

and use new applications.”

● Can you describe whether earlier exposure to the technologies that your business

owners are seeking expertise on would mitigate the need for seeking external

aid?

Faraz stated “Definitely to some extent, an earlier exposure to the technologies can help one to

be a more active contributor and confident. Even it helps to get external aid easily for big

projects.”
 Navarro, McCarthy-Santos, Paulino 18

● What kind of resources or training does your organization provide to help bring

people from low-socioeconomic backgrounds up to speed to be competitive in the

modern digital landscape?

Faraz stated “We provide mentoring to access the free resources that are world wide available.

We create a proper road-map for each student considering his/her interest and skills. The

road-map includes a planned approach to tasks and details of the free resources, and a team that

helps them with their progress and difficulties they face. As a result, indirectly Grey Software

makes her contributors portfolio and they themselves strong and easily find good jobs.”