The Information Gap amongst the Generations and the Implications for Organizations

The Digital Divide

The inequality of access and use of digital technologies has come to be known as the digital divide, and the phenomenon first began to be talked about back in the 1990s when personal computers became available (Strover, 2014). While technology such as the Internet has connected us worldwide, there is also the aspect of how technology has divided us (Hilbert, 2011). The digital divide has revealed more than the “haves” and “have nots”; it has become an indicator of how information and communication capacity are connected to models of access, usage, and impact of digital technologies (Hilbert, 2014). The mobile phone is considered the fastest-diffusing technology in history with many countries actually having their phone subscriptions exceeding their population (International Telecommunication Union, 2012).

With the onset of new technologies comes the ever present challenges the users and non-users face. Tsatsou (2011) proposed the concept of digital “divides” since there are numerous divides and not just one concept of “unequal access to technologies or digital exclusion at an international as well as a local level” (Cammaerts & Van Audenhove, 2003). The digital divide is an important idea to research and understand as it affects people’s abilities to communicate and have access to information that empowers them (Mansell, 2002).