Meneses, J. & Momino, J. (n.d.) "Digital inequalities in children and young people: A technological matter", Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/0/36/38359326.pdf [Accessed 18/03/2009].
In the past few decades many studies have led to consider youth and childhood as homogeneous groups, who are constantly in the process of becoming rather than being. The study of relationship between childhood and technology has been dominated for a long time by deterministic and simplistic theories. To study this relationship further the article aims to understand present and future consequences of the unequal division of technology between children and young people in the case of the internet.
The authors ask the question “is there sustained evidence regarding the effects of individual differences on the appropriation of the internet?" and look at what degree a young person's academic performance can be linked with their access to the internet, as well as sex, age and language. Specific attention is given to internet use for academic and leisure purposes and the authors propose a complex analysis to look at the relationship in depth.
The article concludes that better academics are more connected and use the internet for academic purposes as heavy internet users outside the school are better skilled. The question of digital inequality is not just technological, and must take social-construction processes into account. Therefore access to the internet responds to different ways of appropriation.
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What do you think about the "social construction process" in relation to "digital inequality"? Do you see it in your colleagues? In your previous schoolmates & their families?
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