Generation versus Aging, and Education, Occupation, Gender and Ethnicity Effects in U.S. Digital Divides Susan Carol Losh Department of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems Florida State University Tallahassee FL 32306-4453
[email protected] 850-524-7982 ACKNOWLEDGMENT This research was funded in part by a grant through the American Educational Research Association and National Science Foundation Grant 0532943. I wish to thank the Association and the NSF for their support, Robert Bell, Brandon Nzekwe, AliCe Robbin, Ray Eve and Ryan Wilke for their Continuous insights. The responsibility for errors or misinterpretation, of course, remains my own. Abstract--Information and communication technology (ICT) are members who possess digital skills. Although the same ICT often thought to hold the potential to level many societal barriers, divisions (race, gender, age) recur globally ([6]; [7]; [8]; [9]; e.g., those created by gender or ethnicity. Using the NSF Surveys [10]), the United States, with its historical gender, ethnic, and of Public Understanding of Science and Technology (maximum n economic divisions, ideology of equality, and technological = 18125 adults), I track five generations born from 1891 to 1988 development, provides an appealing test case to track digital over periods from one to 28 years, juxtaposing how generation versus aging, coupled with gender, ethnicity, occupation and divides across generations. education, affected computer ownership and Internet access and Although age is often used as an ICT predictor, use between 1983 and 2006. Using n way analyses of covariance, I generation typiCally is not. Age is a ConCeptually unclear found by 2006, adults who owned a computer went online from variable: is it life CyCle processes? Slowed reflexes and home.