User:Annie.shepherd/Digital divide

Article Draft
=== Lead === The digital divide is the unequal access to digital technology, including smartphones, tablets and the internet. The U.S. Federal Communication Commission's (FCC) 2019 Broadband Deployment Report indicated that 21.3 million Americans do not have access to wired or wireless broadband internet.

The digital divide creates a division and inequality around access to information and resources. In fact, the Information Age in which information and communication technologies (ICTs) have eclipsed manufacturing technologies as the basis for world economies and social connectivity, people without access to the Internet and other ICTs are at a socio-economic disadvantage because they are unable or less able to find and apply for jobs, shop and sell online, participate democratically, or research and learn. The digital divide's effects can be measured based on an individual's amount of time spent on the internet and skill of conducting activity online.

According to a 2021 Pew Research Center report, smartphone ownership and internet use has increased for all Americans, however, a significant gap exists between those with lower incomes and those with higher incomes: U.S. households earning $100K or more are twice as likely to own multiple devices and have home internet service as those making $30K or more, and three times as likely as those earning less than $30k per year. Additionally, 13% of the lowest income households had no access to internet or digital devices at home compared to only 1% of the highest income households.

The term digital divide has evolved to focus on the division between those who benefit from information and communications technologies and those who do not. Thus the aim of "closing the digital divide" refers to efforts to provide meaningful access to Internet infrastructures, applications and services. Though originally coined to refer merely to the matter of access —who is connected to the Internet and is not— The matter of closing the digital divide nowadays includes the matter of how emergent technologies such as artificial intelligence (so-called artificial intelligence for development or AI4D), robotics, and the Internet of Things (IoT) can benefit societies.

Article body
I plan to delete the applications section under Aspects and restructure the article. I plan to replace the images to be more visually appealing and cut down on the unnecessary facts to streamline sentences.