If Internet is essential, why is it still so hard to get?
The answer is in how and where we try to close the Digital Divide.
Kevin Frazier runs The Oregon Way. After reviewing pieces and attending class at the UC Berkeley School of Law, he operates No One Left Offline, a nonprofit focused on closing the Digital Divide.
Support for bare necessities shouldn’t come with strings attached—like completing long forms, hopping through eligibility hoops, and complying with burdensome reporting requirements. That’s what makes food banks and emergency shelters critical parts of our social support network. Rather than get bogged down in procedure, these organizations and institutions are fueled by a desire to provide immediate support—with as few questions asked as possible. Food banks, for example, are not bogged down by grant requirements to track how frequently and how much recipients eat. Emergency shelters aren't asked to evaluate the quality of the sleep of individuals using shelter beds. Efforts to address immediate Internet needs should also be freed from excessive and burdensome tracking that often gets in the way of providing robust support, while also raising privacy concerns.
Access to the Internet, like access to food and health care, is essential. Yet, the ways we try to bridge the gap between the digital-haves and digital-have-nots are too slow, too expensive, and too focused on meeting grant requirements than meeting the needs of community members. It’s time that advocates for affordable, high-speed Internet learn some lessons from the most effective parts of our social support network.
The first key lesson is to meet people where they are. Food banks, the second wave of vaccination efforts, and mobile libraries (i.e. books on trucks) have all learned and implemented this lesson. If you want to make sure folks have the essentials required to survive you need to eliminate as many logistical barriers as possible. That’s why we need “Internet drives” to become part and parcel of these other services—where one organization is distributing food, they should also be handing out hotspots; where one truck goes with COVID-19 shots, digital literacy materials should be brought along as well.
The second key lesson is to empower, rather than constrain the choice of individuals. It’s true that there are only so many choices available to folks going through a food bank: what kind of bread, how many boxes of cereal, crunchy or creamy peanut butter. Still, there are choices and those choices are made by the recipients, not the providers. For too long, efforts to focus on closing the digital divide have offered binary solutions—you either get this device or none at all; you pay for this much Internet or remain offline. Closing the digital divide requires giving recipients of Internet services the autonomy to make choices that align best with their goals, finances, and level of digital literacy.
The third is to reduce the duplication associated with myriad providers offering myriad services. Right now the Internet is viewed as distinct from other essentials. By making individuals in difficult circumstances jump from service to service—food bank to health clinic to employment office, the current social support system makes it nearly impossible for intended recipients to efficiently receive all the support to which they’re entitled. An opportunity center, both in-person and online, should be our aspiration: a single destination for anyone and everyone looking for the basic requirements to thrive in the 21st Century.
No One Left Offline, an all-volunteer nonprofit aiming to close the Digital Divide, is actively recruiting organizations to start one such opportunity center, specifically in the NYC area. NOLO has had great success in distributing hotspots to community members seeking online opportunities, but it’s apparent that access to the Internet is only one part of empowering individuals to reach their full potential. That’s why NOLO is so insistent on disrupting our traditional notion of increasing broadband access. Millions of Americans don’t have time to wait for partisan bickering to resolve itself in Washington, D.C.; we already have the capacity, resources, and distribution channels to provide affordable, high-speed Internet to all Americans. Realizing that potential, though, will only happen if Internet access is treated as an emergency.
As with all good projects, NOLO’s first opportunity center will start small: we’re hoping to partner with food banks in Oregon and/or NYC (where many NOLO volunteers reside) to disperse hotspots to community members. Hotspot recipients will not only leave with food and access to the Internet, they’ll also attend an introductory digital literacy training before they head out the door (akin to the fifteen minute waiting period after a COVID shot, but with more substantive guidance). This brief training will help recipients make the most of their hotspots from day one, while also providing them with contact information to ask additional questions and receive additional training.
Access to the Internet cannot and should not be treated as a second-order need. Like food, water, and shelter, it’s a prerequisite to getting by in our digital age. That’s why it’s time to stop relying solely on policy to solve what’s really an allocation issue: we have all the devices we need to close the Digital Divide; let’s do more than hope for long-term solutions, when we can spread these devices now.
*************************************
Shape the future of The Oregon Way. Take this survey.