lack of internet connection essay

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How to Set Up and Start Using a Cash App Account

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While it may seem like almost everyone has internet access, a shocking number of families lack fast or reliable internet connections. There are roughly 5 million households with school-age children who don’t have broadband internet access at home. That means millions of students are being left behind.

There are many ways that a lack of internet access can affect a student’s academic performance. Students without internet can’t connect with teachers or classmates, do independent research, or get online homework help. For families, not having internet access can mean missing out on information or losing out on a direct line of communication with schools and teachers.

One of the biggest problems faced by students without internet access at home is their inability to complete homework. Homework has long been a source of hot debate within the education community. Should homework be assigned? Those who say yes argue that homework allows students to continue learning at home and prepares them for the rigors of college. Others claim that homework is unfair—home is not an even playing field, and some students have access to more resources and a better environment for completing homework.

The internet has only intensified this debate. Up to 70% of teachers assign homework that requires the use of the internet. About 65% of students use the internet to complete homework, which includes doing research, submitting assignments, emailing teachers, and collaborating online with classmates. But what does that mean for students who don’t have internet access at home? They may fall behind, or they might spend hours looking for free Wi-Fi access points.

Schools increasingly expect parents to be able to log on, too. Teachers use email lists to update parents on field trips, class activities, and more. School websites may be the only place for parents to find valuable information. Even grades are going online, with many schools using internet-based grade books. In theory, this allows parents easier access to their child’s grades. In practice, this can mean certain parents are left behind—namely, those without reliable internet access.

Who exactly are these students without internet access? In 2015, the Pew Research Center analyzed data from studies on internet access and found that the problem is mainly in low-income families. Among households with an annual income under $50,000, 31.4% don’t have broadband internet access. For households with an annual income over $50,000, the number is much smaller—only 8.4% lack access to broadband internet.

There is also a racial gap when it comes to internet access. Eighty-eight percent of White households and 92% of Asian households with school-age children have high-speed internet access. On the other hand, only 72% of Black and Hispanic households with school-age children have high-speed internet access.

Students from low-income families and minority students are often already at a disadvantage. Black and Hispanic students score lower on standardized tests and are less likely to earn a college degree. Students from wealthier families consistently make better SAT scores than those from lower income families.

A lack of reliable, high-speed internet will only make the so-called achievement gap wider. Now low-income and minority students may also have to fight against the gap between students with internet access and those without. This new inequality is often called the digital divide, and it is a growing problem in education.

There are many proposed solutions. Some school districts now provide free Wi-Fi on school buses , allowing students to complete homework during their commute. Programs sponsored by the government and other organizations help provide low-income families with internet access. But nothing has yet completely eliminated the digital divide, and there are still millions of students who don’t have internet access.

How can school districts and other stakeholders help students who lack high-speed internet access? Tell us what you think!

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Coronavirus has exposed the digital divide like never before

Fewer than 1 in 10 households in less economically developed countries world are connected. Image:  REUTERS/Amanda Perobelli

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Stay up to date:.

• Billions of people are going online to stay in touch during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• But almost half of the world’s population has no access to the internet.
• Fewer than 1 in 5 people in the least developed countries are connected.
• This digital divide impacts women more than men.

From schools setting coursework online to office staff working from home, the internet is the answer to many coronavirus lockdown problems. But what about the billions of people who can't get online?

Have you read?

How governments and mobile operators are easing network congestion during the covid-19 crisis, 3 campaigns spreading the joy of reading to children at home, working from home here are 5 tips for a more human digital experience.

Among the many inequalities exposed by COVID-19, the digital divide is not only one of the most stark, but also among the most surprising. Even in developed countries, internet access is often lower than you might think.

Take the United States for example. More than 6% of the population (21 million people) have no high-speed connection. In Australia, the figure is 13% . Even in the world's richest countries, the web can't keep everyone connected.

Globally, only just over half of households (55%) have an internet connection , according to UNESCO. In the developed world, 87% are connected compared with 47% in developing nations , and just 19% in the least developed countries.

Offline world

In total, 3.7 billion people have no internet access. The majority are in poorer countries, where the need to spread information about how to combat COVID-19 is most urgent. Migrants and the poorest are most vulnerable to the virus , says the World Health Organization (WHO).

More than one billion children across the globe are currently locked out of classrooms because of quarantine measures. No matter that teachers are running daily online classes – many of these children simply cannot take part.

Working from home is only a reality for service sector workers and administrators. But, as figures show, not all of them will be able to connect. Even then, they may find that their connectivity is affected by the sheer volume of people using the web.

US-based M-Labs, which monitors global internet speeds, says that in spite of reassurances from internet service providers that networks are coping with the extra load, broadband speeds have been slowing in some areas .

Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic requires global cooperation among governments, international organizations and the business community , which is at the centre of the World Economic Forum’s mission as the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation.

Since its launch on 11 March, the Forum’s COVID Action Platform has brought together 1,667 stakeholders from 1,106 businesses and organizations to mitigate the risk and impact of the unprecedented global health emergency that is COVID-19.

The platform is created with the support of the World Health Organization and is open to all businesses and industry groups, as well as other stakeholders, aiming to integrate and inform joint action.

As an organization, the Forum has a track record of supporting efforts to contain epidemics. In 2017, at our Annual Meeting, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) was launched – bringing together experts from government, business, health, academia and civil society to accelerate the development of vaccines. CEPI is currently supporting the race to develop a vaccine against this strand of the coronavirus.

America’s unconnected millions

In the US, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) says that estimates of the number of Americans without internet access may be understated. A 2017 Congress report said 12 million American children were growing up in homes that had no internet connection .

Microsoft President Brad Smith has pointed out that 19 million unconnected households in America are in rural areas . Research for the company’s rural internet project Airband suggests more than 157 million Americans don’t use the internet at broadband speeds .

“Without a proper broadband connection, these communities can’t start or run a modern business, access telemedicine, take an online class, digitally transform their farm or research a school project online,” says Smith.

UNESCO and the ITU’s Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development set a target of connecting 75% of the world’s population to fast internet via cable or wireless by 2025. Although uptake of mobile technology is rising in the developing world, the costs of mobile internet are higher.

Africa’s expensive data

In sub-Saharan Africa, one gigabit (GB) of data - enough to stream a standard-definition film for one hour - costs nearly 40% of the average monthly wage .

According to the World Bank, 85% of Africans live on less than $5.50 a day . Small wonder, then, that most find themselves cut off by the digital divide. And it’s not just a problem in developing nations. In Australia, almost a third of less well-off homes have no internet connection .

South Africa has made access to its COVID-19 website free of charge , with no data or airtime required, and local broadband provider Telkom has done the same for educational websites and sites providing coronavirus updates, such as the National Institute for Communicable Diseases.

But free access or not, UNESCO says that there remains a significant digital gender divide. Across 10 countries in Africa, Asia and South America, women are 30-50% less likely than men to use the internet to participate in public life. Globally, women are 23% less likely than men to use mobile internet. The gap is widest in South Asia, followed by sub-Saharan Africa.

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License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

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The internet and the pandemic, 90% of americans say the internet has been essential or important to them, many made video calls and 40% used technology in new ways. but while tech was a lifeline for some, others faced struggles.

Pew Research Center has a long history of studying technology adoption trends and the impact of digital technology on society. This report focuses on American adults’ experiences with and attitudes about their internet and technology use during the COVID-19 outbreak. For this analysis, we surveyed 4,623 U.S. adults from April 12-18, 2021. Everyone who took part is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the  ATP’s methodology .

Chapter 1 of this report includes responses to an open-ended question and the overall report includes a number of quotations to help illustrate themes and add nuance to the survey findings. Quotations may have been lightly edited for grammar, spelling and clarity. The first three themes mentioned in each open-ended response, according to a researcher-developed codebook, were coded into categories for analysis. 

Here are the questions used for this report , along with responses, and its methodology .

The  coronavirus  has transformed many aspects of Americans’ lives. It  shut down  schools, businesses and workplaces and forced millions to  stay at home  for extended lengths of time. Public health authorities recommended  limits on social contact  to try to contain the spread of the virus, and these profoundly altered the way many worked, learned, connected with loved ones, carried out basic daily tasks, celebrated and mourned. For some, technology played a role in this transformation.  

Results from a new Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults conducted April 12-18, 2021, reveal the extent to which people’s use of the internet has changed, their views about how helpful technology has been for them and the struggles some have faced. 

The vast majority of adults (90%) say the internet has been at least important to them personally during the pandemic, the survey finds. The share who say it has been  essential  – 58% – is up slightly from 53% in April 2020. There have also been upticks in the shares who say the internet has been essential in the past year among those with a bachelor’s degree or more formal education, adults under 30, and those 65 and older. 

A large majority of Americans (81%) also say they talked with others via video calls at some point since the pandemic’s onset. And for 40% of Americans, digital tools have taken on new relevance: They report they used technology or the internet in ways that were new or different to them. Some also sought upgrades to their service as the pandemic unfolded: 29% of broadband users did something to improve the speed, reliability or quality of their high-speed internet connection at home since the beginning of the outbreak.

Still, tech use has not been an unmitigated boon for everyone. “ Zoom fatigue ” was widely speculated to be a problem in the pandemic, and some Americans report related experiences in the new survey: 40% of those who have ever talked with others via video calls since the beginning of the pandemic say they have felt worn out or fatigued often or sometimes by the time they spend on them. Moreover,  changes in screen time  occurred for  Americans generally  and for  parents of young children . The survey finds that a third of all adults say they tried to cut back on time spent on their smartphone or the internet at some point during the pandemic. In addition, 72% of parents of children in grades K-12 say their kids are spending more time on screens compared with before the outbreak. 1

For many, digital interactions could only do so much as a stand-in for in-person communication. About two-thirds of Americans (68%) say the interactions they would have had in person, but instead had online or over the phone, have generally been useful – but not a replacement for in-person contact. Another 15% say these tools haven’t been of much use in their interactions. Still, 17% report that these digital interactions have been just as good as in-person contact.

Some types of technology have been more helpful than others for Americans. For example, 44% say text messages or group messaging apps have helped them a lot to stay connected with family and friends, 38% say the same about voice calls and 30% say this about video calls. Smaller shares say social media sites (20%) and email (19%) have helped them in this way.

The survey offers a snapshot of Americans’ lives just over one year into the pandemic as they reflected back on what had happened. It is important to note the findings were gathered in April 2021, just before  all U.S. adults became eligible for coronavirus vaccine s. At the time, some states were  beginning to loosen restrictions  on businesses and social encounters. This survey also was fielded before the delta variant  became prominent  in the United States,  raising concerns  about new and  evolving variants . 

Here are some of the key takeaways from the survey.

Americans’ tech experiences in the pandemic are linked to digital divides, tech readiness 

Some Americans’ experiences with technology haven’t been smooth or easy during the pandemic. The digital divides related to  internet use  and  affordability  were highlighted by the pandemic and also emerged in new ways as life moved online.

Beyond that, affordability  remained a persistent concern  for a portion of digital tech users as the pandemic continued – about a quarter of home broadband users (26%) and smartphone owners (24%) said in the April 2021 survey that they worried a lot or some about paying their internet and cellphone bills over the next few months. 

From parents of children facing the “ homework gap ” to Americans struggling to  afford home internet , those with lower incomes have been particularly likely to struggle. At the same time, some of those with higher incomes have been affected as well.

Affordability and connection problems have hit broadband users with lower incomes especially hard. Nearly half of broadband users with lower incomes, and about a quarter of those with midrange incomes, say that as of April they were at least somewhat worried about paying their internet bill over the next few months. 3 And home broadband users with lower incomes are roughly 20 points more likely to say they often or sometimes experience problems with their connection than those with relatively high incomes. Still, 55% of those with lower incomes say the internet has been essential to them personally in the pandemic.

At the same time, Americans’ levels of formal education are associated with their experiences turning to tech during the pandemic. 

Those with a bachelor’s or advanced degree are about twice as likely as those with a high school diploma or less formal education to have used tech in new or different ways during the pandemic. There is also roughly a 20 percentage point gap between these two groups in the shares who have made video calls about once a day or more often and who say these calls have helped at least a little to stay connected with family and friends. And 71% of those with a bachelor’s degree or more education say the internet has been essential, compared with 45% of those with a high school diploma or less.

More broadly, not all Americans believe they have key tech skills. In this survey, about a quarter of adults (26%) say they usually need someone else’s help to set up or show them how to use a new computer, smartphone or other electronic device. And one-in-ten report they have little to no confidence in their ability to use these types of devices to do the things they need to do online. This report refers to those who say they experience either or both of these issues as having “lower tech readiness.” Some 30% of adults fall in this category. (A full description of how this group was identified can be found in  Chapter 3. )

These struggles are particularly acute for older adults, some of whom have had to  learn new tech skills  over the course of the pandemic. Roughly two-thirds of adults 75 and older fall into the group having lower tech readiness – that is, they either have little or no confidence in their ability to use their devices, or generally need help setting up and learning how to use new devices. Some 54% of Americans ages 65 to 74 are also in this group. 

Americans with lower tech readiness have had different experiences with technology during the pandemic. While 82% of the Americans with lower tech readiness say the internet has been at least important to them personally during the pandemic, they are less likely than those with higher tech readiness to say the internet has been essential (39% vs. 66%). Some 21% of those with lower tech readiness say digital interactions haven’t been of much use in standing in for in-person contact, compared with 12% of those with higher tech readiness. 

46% of parents with lower incomes whose children faced school closures say their children had at least one problem related to the ‘homework gap’

As school moved online for many families, parents and their children experienced profound changes. Fully 93% of parents with K-12 children at home say these children had some online instruction during the pandemic. Among these parents, 62% report that online learning has gone very or somewhat well, and 70% say it has been very or somewhat easy for them to help their children use technology for online instruction.

Still, 30% of the parents whose children have had online instruction during the pandemic say it has been very or somewhat difficult for them to help their children use technology or the internet for this. 

The survey also shows that children from households with lower incomes who faced school closures in the pandemic have been especially likely to encounter tech-related obstacles in completing their schoolwork – a phenomenon contributing to the “ homework gap .”

Overall, about a third (34%) of all parents whose children’s schools closed at some point say their children have encountered at least one of the tech-related issues we asked about amid COVID-19: having to do schoolwork on a cellphone, being unable to complete schoolwork because of lack of computer access at home, or having to use public Wi-Fi to finish schoolwork because there was no reliable connection at home. 

This share is higher among parents with lower incomes whose children’s schools closed. Nearly half (46%) say their children have faced at least one of these issues. Some with higher incomes were affected as well – about three-in-ten (31%) of these parents with midrange incomes say their children faced one or more of these issues, as do about one-in-five of these parents with higher household incomes.

Prior Center work has documented this “ homework gap ” in other contexts – both  before the coronavirus outbreak  and  near the beginning of the pandemic . In April 2020, for example, parents with lower incomes were particularly likely to think their children would face these struggles amid the outbreak.

Besides issues related to remote schooling, other changes were afoot in families as the pandemic forced many families to shelter in place. For instance, parents’ estimates of their children’s screen time – and family rules around this – changed in some homes. About seven-in-ten parents with children in kindergarten through 12th grade (72%) say their children were spending more time on screens as of the April survey compared with before the outbreak. Some 39% of parents with school-age children say they have become less strict about screen time rules during the outbreak. About one-in-five (18%) say they have become more strict, while 43% have kept screen time rules about the same. 

More adults now favor the idea that schools should provide digital technology to all students during the pandemic than did in April 2020

Americans’ tech struggles related to digital divides gained attention from policymakers and news organizations as the pandemic progressed.

On some policy issues, public attitudes changed over the course of the outbreak – for example, views on what K-12 schools should provide to students shifted. Some 49% now say K-12 schools have a responsibility to provide all students with laptop or tablet computers in order to help them complete their schoolwork during the pandemic, up 12 percentage points from a year ago.

The shares of those who say so have increased for both major political parties over the past year: This view shifted 15 points for Republicans and those who lean toward the GOP, and there was a 9-point increase for Democrats and Democratic leaners.

Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say the government has this responsibility, and within the Republican Party, those with lower incomes are more likely to say this than their counterparts earning more money. 

Video calls and conferencing have been part of everyday life

Americans’ own words provide insight into exactly how their lives changed amid COVID-19. When asked to describe the new or different ways they had used technology, some Americans mention video calls and conferencing facilitating a variety of virtual interactions – including attending events like weddings, family holidays and funerals or transforming where and how they worked. 5 From family calls, shopping for groceries and placing takeout orders online to having telehealth visits with medical professionals or participating in online learning activities, some aspects of life have been virtually transformed: 

“I’ve gone from not even knowing remote programs like Zoom even existed, to using them nearly every day.” – Man, 54

“[I’ve been] h andling … deaths of family and friends remotely, attending and sharing classical music concerts and recitals with other professionals, viewing [my] own church services and Bible classes, shopping. … Basically, [the internet has been] a lifeline.”  – Woman, 69

“I … use Zoom for church youth activities. [I] use Zoom for meetings. I order groceries and takeout food online. We arranged for a ‘digital reception’ for my daughter’s wedding as well as live streaming the event.” – Woman, 44

When asked about video calls specifically, half of Americans report they have talked with others in this way at least once a week since the beginning of the outbreak; one-in-five have used these platforms daily. But how often people have experienced this type of digital connectedness varies by age. For example, about a quarter of adults ages 18 to 49 (27%) say they have connected with others on video calls about once a day or more often, compared with 16% of those 50 to 64 and just 7% of those 65 and older. 

Even as video technology became a part of life for users, many  accounts of burnout  surfaced and some speculated that “Zoom fatigue” was setting in as Americans grew weary of this type of screen time. The survey finds that some 40% of those who participated in video calls since the beginning of the pandemic – a third of all Americans – say they feel worn out or fatigued often or sometimes from the time they spend on video calls. About three-quarters of those who have been on these calls several times a day in the pandemic say this.

Fatigue is not limited to frequent users, however: For example, about a third (34%) of those who have made video calls about once a week say they feel worn out at least sometimes.

These are among the main findings from the survey. Other key results include:

Some Americans’ personal lives and social relationships have changed during the pandemic:  Some 36% of Americans say their own personal lives changed in a major way as a result of the coronavirus outbreak. Another 47% say their personal lives changed, but only a little bit.   About half (52%) of those who say major change has occurred in their personal lives due to the pandemic also say they have used tech in new ways, compared with about four-in-ten (38%) of those whose personal lives changed a little bit and roughly one-in-five (19%) of those who say their personal lives stayed about the same.

Even as tech helped some to stay connected, a quarter of Americans say they feel less close to close family members now compared with before the pandemic, and about four-in-ten (38%) say the same about friends they know well. Roughly half (53%) say this about casual acquaintances.

The majority of those who tried to sign up for vaccine appointments in the first part of the year went online to do so:  Despite early problems with  vaccine rollout  and  online registration systems , in the April survey tech problems did  not  appear to be major struggles for most adults who had tried to sign up online for COVID-19 vaccines. The survey explored Americans’ experiences getting these vaccine appointments and reveals that in April 57% of adults had tried to sign themselves up and 25% had tried to sign someone else up. Fully 78% of those who tried to sign themselves up and 87% of those who tried to sign others up were online registrants. 

When it comes to difficulties with the online vaccine signup process, 29% of those who had tried to sign up online – 13% of all Americans – say it was very or somewhat difficult to sign themselves up for vaccines at that time. Among five reasons for this that the survey asked about, the most common  major  reason was lack of available appointments, rather than tech-related problems. Adults 65 and older who tried to sign themselves up for the vaccine online were the most likely age group to experience at least some difficulty when they tried to get a vaccine appointment.

Tech struggles and usefulness alike vary by race and ethnicity.  Americans’ experiences also have varied across racial and ethnic groups. For example, Black Americans are more likely than White or Hispanic adults to meet the criteria for having “lower tech readiness.” 6 Among broadband users, Black and Hispanic adults were also more likely than White adults to be worried about paying their bills for their high-speed internet access at home as of April, though the share of Hispanic Americans who say this declined sharply since April 2020. And a majority of Black and Hispanic broadband users say they at least sometimes have experienced problems with their internet connection. 

Still, Black adults and Hispanic adults are more likely than White adults to say various technologies – text messages, voice calls, video calls, social media sites and email – have helped them a lot to stay connected with family and friends amid the pandemic.

Tech has helped some adults under 30 to connect with friends, but tech fatigue also set in for some.  Only about one-in-five adults ages 18 to 29 say they feel closer to friends they know well compared with before the pandemic. This share is twice as high as that among adults 50 and older. Adults under 30 are also more likely than any other age group to say social media sites have helped a lot in staying connected with family and friends (30% say so), and about four-in-ten of those ages 18 to 29 say this about video calls. 

Screen time affected some negatively, however. About six-in-ten adults under 30 (57%) who have ever made video calls in the pandemic say they at least sometimes feel worn out or fatigued from spending time on video calls, and about half (49%) of young adults say they have tried to cut back on time spent on the internet or their smartphone.

• Throughout this report, “parents” refers to those who said they were the parent or guardian of any children who were enrolled in elementary, middle or high school and who lived in their household at the time of the survey. ↩
• People with a high-speed internet connection at home also are referred to as “home broadband users” or “broadband users” throughout this report. ↩
• Family incomes are based on 2019 earnings and adjusted for differences in purchasing power by geographic region and for household sizes. Middle income is defined here as two-thirds to double the median annual family income for all panelists on the American Trends Panel. Lower income falls below that range; upper income falls above it. ↩
• A separate  Center study  also fielded in April 2021 asked Americans what the government is responsible for on a number of topics, but did not mention the coronavirus outbreak. Some 43% of Americans said in that survey that the federal government has a responsibility to provide high-speed internet for all Americans. This was a significant increase from 2019, the last time the Center had asked that more general question, when 28% said the same. ↩
• Quotations in this report may have been lightly edited for grammar, spelling and clarity. ↩
• There were not enough Asian American respondents in the sample to be broken out into a separate analysis. As always, their responses are incorporated into the general population figures throughout this report. ↩

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About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

The Number One Reason Students Still Lack Internet at Home: Parents Can’t Afford It

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Affordability—not lack of high-speed broadband infrastructure in the community—is the biggest reason millions of students are still without home internet access, even as the federal government has poured billions of dollars into closing the digital divide.

In fact, almost two-thirds of offline households have access to home broadband connections in their areas, but can’t cover the cost, according to “No Home Left Offline,” a report released Thursday by EducationSuperHighway , a nonprofit that champions greater broadband access in schools and homes.

“The broadband affordability gap is present in every state and has become one of the primary inhibitors of access to economic security and opportunity,” wrote Evan Marwell, the founder and CEO of EducationSuperHighway, in a letter that accompanied the report. “It is a reality centered in our nation’s poorest communities and disproportionately impacts people of color.”

EducationSuperHighway has been part of one of the biggest digital education success stories of the past decade. The nonprofit launched in 2012, and by 2019, the number of students with strong broadband in their classrooms had catapulted from just 4 million to 45 million.

The effort was such a triumph that, in 2019, Marwell declared “Mission Accomplished” and announced plans to sunset the organization the following year.

But 2020, of course, brought a worldwide pandemic and unprecedented use of remote and hybrid learning and the technology available in students’ homes. Home internet connectivity for students went from an important service to have to something that could make-or-break their academic success.

So, now, instead of closing its doors, EducationSuperHighway is moving on to its second act: EducationSuperHighway 2.0. The organization’s mission will be “to close the digital divide for the 18 million households that have access to the internet but can’t afford to connect,” Marwell wrote in his letter.

EducationSuperHighway CEO Evan Marwell will be speaking with Education Week’s Kevin Bushweller at the EdWeek Market Brief summit , being held virtually Nov. 9-11. The event is for education companies and others seeking insights on the direction of the K-12 market. Learn more .

One item on the to-do list: Helping low-income families take advantage of federal broadband affordability programs already at their disposal. As few as 17 percent of people eligible for those programs have enrolled, the report says.

That’s partly due to lack of awareness. Only 25 percent of lower-income people had even heard of a new federal emergency broadband benefit created in response to the pandemic, according to a national survey cited in the report.

Many offline families are also worried about sharing personal information through the sign-up process, or aren’t convinced that the program will actually cover their internet costs.

And signing up for the program can be daunting, particularly when it comes to producing documents to verify income. The nonprofit is planning to work with school districts to find families with school-age children who are unconnected, and help them enroll in programs that cover home internet access costs.

Marwell and his team also plan to build public-private partnerships, better identify unconnected households, help states make the most of new federal resources for broadband, and come up with guidance for states, cities, and school districts that want to ramp up connectivity in their communities, Marwell wrote.

“Internet access is no longer a luxury,” Marwell wrote. “It’s a necessity in the daily lives of every American.”

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Back to School: A Look at the Internet Access Gap

Date: August 6, 2020

With the coronavirus pandemic still ongoing, many students, parents, and teachers are preparing to start the new school year online. However, access to the internet, and high-speed broadband internet (e.g. cable, fiber optic, or DSL) in particular, is highly unequal. Data shows that low-income households disproportionately lack access to broadband internet, putting their children at risk of falling behind. 

More than one in five low-income households did not have any access to the internet in 2018, more than four times the rate of all other households. A staggering 43.7 percent of low-income households lacked access to personal high-speed internet at home, more than double that of the rest of the population.

Figure 1: Internet Access Among U.S. Households

Our analysis of data from the American Community Survey (ACS) shows that immigrant communities are also heavily affected. More than 5.2 million immigrant households, almost three out of 10, lacked access to personal broadband internet access at home in 2018. This includes 2.2 million households with no internet access and an additional 3 million households accessing the internet only by cell phone or dial-up connection.

Unsurprisingly, low-income immigrant households were even more likely to lack access, with 41.9 percent of low-income immigrant households having no personal high-speed internet connection at home.

Figure 2: Broadband Internet Access Among Immigrants Households

When looking at broadband internet access, we have excluded households living in group settings , such as universities and nursing facilities, and the ones with free internet access provided by their employers or cities and towns, since ACS does not release information about the types of internet access for these individual households.

Looking at high-speed internet access among households of different races and ethnicities, Black and Hispanic households are more likely to lack broadband access than White households. Nearly 39 percent of Black households and 27.9 percent of Black immigrant households, and 34.7 percent of Hispanic households and 39.1 percent of Hispanic immigrant households, lacked personal broadband access at home, compared to 26.0 percent of White households.

Figure 3: Broadband Internet Access Among U.S. Households

As school districts across the country prepare to begin classes online due to Covid-19, students in households without high-speed internet access face significant challenges. More than one in five households with school-age children (ages 6-18), including 1.6 million immigrant families, do not have personal broadband internet access at home. This includes 1.5 million households that have no internet access of any kind, as well as 4.6 million households that access the internet at home solely by cell phone or dial-up connection. 

Figure 4: Internet Access Among Households With School-Age Children

Reducing the gap in internet access during the pandemic is critical to ensure that children from disadvantaged households won’t be left behind as schools transition to online learning. Furthermore, to help American students during this challenging time, immigrants are also working hard on the frontlines as educators. Past  NAE research  has already found almost 900,000 immigrants working in K-12 education and more than 750,000 immigrants in higher education. 

For more information, please check out our research portal of Immigration and Covid-19 with weekly updates. If you have any specific questions about our data, please reach out to us at [email protected] .

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Effects of Lack of Internet Access in the Academic Performance of STEM Students

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Inequality and the internet, how the internet can be a powerful tool for greater equality and social mobility. the latest installment in our series “our digital future.”.

In the beginning, the Internet was supposed to be the great equalizer. A source of learning that would allow students in the poorest and most remote areas to have access to the same information that the most privileged children enjoyed. A way for small merchants to sell their goods to vast global markets previously accessible only to the largest, most powerful corporations. A medium where communication was virtually costless, allowing everyone to market anything to anyone without the crippling expense of television, radio or newspaper ads, or direct mail. A vehicle to distribute content from one to many and many to many—creating a utopia of free speech, easy distribution, and an end to the power of the media middlemen. From communications to education, from trade to text, from video to politics, the promise of the Internet was the promise of a more equal society in almost every way.

Twenty years after the dawn of the Internet era, two things are unquestionably true. First, in terms of its reach, impact, and transformative effect, the Internet has exceeded anyone’s wildest imagination. And second, we live in a less equal country than at any point since the Gilded Age. This gaping inequality may not be the fault of the Internet, but we can fairly ask why the Internet didn’t live up to its promise as an equalizer in American life. Is it too soon to see the Internet’s equalizing effects—or too late to do anything about it? And ultimately, is the Internet the enemy of a more equal society—or a tool with yet-to-be-realized potential to make our country a more just place?

A Progressive Agenda for Internet Policy

There are five items that I think are essential to help convert the Internet into a more powerful tool for equality and social mobility. These policies go beyond Internet regulatory policies; rather, they are Internet-related policies that seek to ensure that the benefits of the Internet are more broadly shared, its impact on our society more equitable, and its potential more widely accessible.

Universal Broadband Connectivity

The starting point for any progressive Internet policy has to be universal access to high-speed Internet. Last year I caused some controversy at a panel discussion when I said that I wished the same amount of energy and intensity that was being poured into the net neutrality fight would also be devoted to making sure that everyone in our country had quality broadband Internet access. My point was simply this: For the 50 million Americans who lack any access to broadband Internet, hearing the 250 million who have such access debate whether or not Netflix should have to pay Comcast for rapid streaming must sound like a very abstract debate indeed.

The Obama Administration has had three major initiatives in this area that have overlapped and have had mixed results. Even while the National Broadband Plan was being drafted for release in 2010, the Administration moved forward with an ambitious proposal to increase broadband deployment to underserved urban and rural communities as part of the Recovery Act, starting in mid-2009. As the White House official with overall responsibility for implementing that act, I spent a good deal of time in meetings in 2009 and 2010 trying to ascertain how we could use funds given to the Commerce and Agriculture Departments to close the broadband gap for poorer urban dwellers and more remote rural communities.

Ultimately, the National Broadband Plan, released in March 2010, laid out a strategy for a more comprehensive approach for closing the “digital divide” between broadband haves and have-nots, and a recent fifth-anniversary seminar on progress under the plan noted some improvement. Even so, as many as one-fifth of all Americans still lack access to 25 Mbps broadband, and so, in late March 2015, President Obama announced a new “Broadband Opportunity Council,” a third thrust at closing the gap. The council is supposed to report back by mid-August 2015 with a plan for more universal broadband, which the President called “no longer a luxury . . . [but] a necessity for American families, businesses, and consumers.”

While some critics have argued that many Americans lacking broadband have simply made a “choice” to spend their disposable income on other things, such claims fail to appreciate that overly expensive broadband prices effectively make this necessity a luxury for many families at the bottom end of the economic spectrum. At a time when so much commerce, learning, and public dialogue takes place over the Internet, having one-fifth or one-sixth of our people lack a high-speed connection to that medium should be seen as a serious form of inequality requiring urgent redress. That this problem has not drawn even a fraction of the public discussion and concern that net neutrality has attracted is a reminder of how the absence of these Americans from the digital policy-making debate has so profoundly colored that debate.

Progressives should press the Broadband Opportunity Council to adopt aggressive and creative policies and proposals. State and local building codes should require broadband deployment in all new housing, just as running water and electricity are basic mandates. In the private sector, in addition to efforts by Internet service providers to address this problem, content creators, e-commerce players, and educational institutions should see universal broadband connectivity as a social good they should help achieve.

And the FCC should take every step possible to use its power under Section 706 of the 1996 Telecommunications Act to preempt state laws that forbid local governments from building municipally owned broadband networks. It is almost inconceivable that such laws exist—they are modern successors of early-nineteenth-century laws that granted all sorts of indefensible private monopolies—and they are prime examples of the sort of private-interest lawmaking that should outrage everyone. President Obama has urged the FCC to use its authority to preempt these absurd statutes, and even a critic of the FCC’s earlier efforts to use Section 706 to promote net neutrality, conservative jurist Laurence Silberman, has acknowledged that the provision gives the FCC the power to overturn these state laws.

Widely Available Free Wi-Fi

Just as we must have policies that provide broadband connections to every person’s home, a second area of progressive advocacy should be for free Wi-Fi in every public place in the United States—in parks, city centers, shopping malls, airports, libraries, town squares, public buildings, and, especially, our schools.

The fight between government and industry over the nature and reach of free public Wi-Fi has been raging for years now; this conflict overlaps with and is closely related to the battle over the FCC using its Section 706 authority to enable municipalities to deploy their own broadband networks (which could, in part, be used to power free public Wi-Fi). FCC proposals to promote free public Wi-Fi not only have support from many public-interest advocates, but also from big tech players like Google and Microsoft, which favor having as many people with as much access to the Internet as possible.

President Obama’s ConnectED initiative, which aims to provide universal free Wi-Fi in all schools by 2018, is an important step in the right direction. ConnectED is a pragmatic approach to making sure that—for several hours a day, at least—all young people have free access to a fast Internet connection for learning and expression.

But Wi-Fi in schools is only a start, and is far from sufficient. While national policy in this area remains mired in conflict, some visionary local leaders—like New York Mayor Bill de Blasio—are taking action. De Blasio has proposed to turn 10,000 moribund former telephone booths into Wi-Fi hot spots, covering a substantial part of the public space in America’s largest city. Other cities are also pressing similar efforts: From the boardwalk at Bethany Beach, Delaware, to the downtown access program in Newton, North Carolina, to the free access program in The Dalles, Oregon, more than 75 U.S. cities of all sizes have free Wi-Fi in some or all of their public spaces. But most of America’s major cities lack such programs, and as a whole, the United States has a long way to go.

More than 150 years ago, reformers advocated a system of free public libraries to help promote learning and advancement for people of all economic groups. Today, many times the information and enrichment opportunity of any library is available quickly and easily via the Internet. Having that information be available for free, not just in libraries or schools, but extensively in public spaces in a community, could empower young people in ways never imagined before, help working people find access to job training and job search information, and enrich the lives of our elderly far beyond run-of-the-mill outreach programs.

Common-Sense Regulatory Balance

From its birth as a mass medium in the mid-1990s, the Internet has largely been a regulatory-free zone. Nothing illustrates this as much as the absence of sales tax on goods bought on the Internet. There are plenty of reasons to hate the sales tax as a tax, but there is really very little justification for the idea that the sale of a book bought at the local bookshop is taxed 4 to 8 percent, but the same book bought from an online retailer is free of taxation. At first, this disparity in tax treatment was de minimis when e-commerce was de minimis ; it also avoided a lot of complexity in assessing and collecting taxes from multiple jurisdictions when online sales platforms lacked such capacity. But in 2015, it is virtually inexplicable. No doubt that is why a large, bipartisan majority of senators (69-27) voted last year to change this policy; it is time for the GOP House, which has blocked this legislation, to relent. Restoring this lost revenue to state and local coffers would fund countless needed programs, and/or potentially lighten the sales-tax burden on necessities like groceries (which are still largely bought offline).

More broadly, as I have argued previously in a variety of venues, we need to find the right balance of innovation-promoting regulatory disruption, without having the Internet’s deregulatory culture sweep away common-sense protections for consumers. Uber’s disruption of the taxi regulatory scheme is absolutely a good thing, but it should not wipe away protections that ensure that drivers are qualified and passengers ride safely. Regulatory schemes should not stifle innovation in commercial drones, or new drugs and tests, or financial services—but homeowners, patients, and consumers should not have to fear for their lives or their pocketbooks due to a lack of appropriate safeguards.

As progressives, we have a special role to play in this regulatory dialogue. Our activism and participation are likely to be the key drivers of protecting workers and consumers as the pace of innovation increases. But at the same time, we need to be mindful that the underlying root of “progressive” is progress : We need to avoid Luddism or faux nostalgia for eras that were not, in fact, particularly great for working people. Innovation can create more opportunity for more people, more ladders to the middle class, better lives for everyone. We need to be pro-innovation, even as we insist on rules to prevent the innovators from exploiting or endangering everyone else.

Online Learning and Training

Online learning has the potential to break the inherent limitations on access to the best teachers, curriculum, and institutions that the expense and physical constraints of in-person learning create. Why shouldn’t every student in America learn philosophy from a Harvard professor, math from an MIT scholar, music from a Juilliard instructor, and computer science from the best teachers at Stanford? And why shouldn’t they be able to do it for a fraction of the cost and difficulty of obtaining an on-campus degree?

But alas, the effort to promote online learning has become an ideological battleground in which progressives are prominent among the forces of resistance. In part, it is because online learning has become widely identified with private, for-profit colleges that charge vast sums and have produced dubious results for some students. In part, it is because online learning is associated with corporate donors and board members at institutions of higher education who have taken an adversarial (and often dismissive) approach to professional educators and their concerns. It is also because of close ties between progressives and members of the academy, who see online learning as threatening their livelihoods and job security.

It is time for a fresh start in this broken relationship. Of course, nothing replaces the incredible experience of face-to-face learning with an amazing teacher, and a key goal of education policy must be to enable as many people as possible—from all income groups—the maximum possible access to such experiences. But almost by definition, those experiences are a finite resource, and the need for more learning and training is nearly infinite.

Let’s begin here: With all the work that President Obama and other advocates have done to make community college affordable and accessible to all, it is the cost of textbooks—sky high, and in many cases greater than any remaining tuition charged to students after aid and initiatives—that is the most burdensome out-of-pocket cost of higher education for many students. Why shouldn’t every textbook be online, be available for download, or be available as an e-book at a fraction of the cost of traditional print editions? Harvard Law School’s H20 initiative, for example, creates online law course casebooks that are free for students (printed casebooks cost $150 to $200 each) and that have learning tools that far exceed those of printed editions.

More significantly, however, it is time to find a form of online education that progressives can embrace and promote to provide the millions who will never be able to access on-campus learning with the best possible opportunities to learn new things, develop new skills, and broaden their minds. Democratizing access to information, training, and learning has always been a core progressive objective, from the days of the first public schools in America to the land-grant colleges, to the GI Bill, to Pell Grants, to today’s battle over student-loan interest rates.

While we should not let up on efforts to increase access and affordability for in-person learning for all who want it, shouldn’t we also enable every person in the country, at little or no cost, to access the very best teachers, providing the very best lessons, on virtually every topic under the sun—at any time of the day or night (before or after work, on weekends, during work breaks)—from any location that is convenient for the young, the elderly, the disabled, working parents, and everyone else? The fact that highly touted, venture-capital-backed MOOCs (massive open online courses) have had some visible commercial failures should not be a cause for cheering from progressives. It should be a call to action to find ways to repurpose failed initiatives in this area into better models that will provide the most learning for the greatest number of people.

Finally, we must have much better programs and opportunities for in-career learning via online training. As noted above, the vast majority of efforts to move learning online have been in the high-cost, high-margin business of higher education. But at a time when the need for adults to learn throughout their lives has never been greater—and especially when that need is acute with relation to technology-sector jobs—better and more online training must be a priority. The same effort and priority being given to teaching children how to code should be made to teach coding to adults who want new careers—or who might be able to launch new businesses. And that’s just one example of training that must be expanded online.

Simply put, online learning offers the prospect of reducing virtually every barrier that stands in the way of people improving their economic prospects through acquiring new skills and information: It is accessible, affordable, and convenient. While many progressive policies are already focused on making such training more affordable, the cost barrier is only one of many—and in many cases, for working people with family obligations, child care obligations, limited transportation options, and other “real life” burdens, cost is not even the most serious impediment. Using online learning to overcome these other obstacles is a critical potential pathway.

Worker Mobility

Policies that make it easier for people to move from job to job, with minimal restrictions and cost, will enable countless people to benefit from opportunities in the Internet economy that are now inaccessible to them.

The most important of these policies has already been enacted: The Affordable Care Act, which gives all Americans the opportunity to have health-care coverage divorced from their employment arrangement, means that no person need remain in an unproductive or undesirable job merely to have health insurance. But having more portable health insurance—and that is not completely facilitated, even by the ACA—is only the start.

First, we need to change the law to limit excessive use of non-competition clauses. These non-competition clauses prevent workers from leaving their jobs and taking new ones, or starting new businesses, in the fields they know best; this often means that employers can fire their workers, but workers lack the leverage to quit and do more productive work elsewhere. Such clauses are appropriate in specialized circumstances for a small class of workers, but they are now being abused to restrict a dizzying array of workers, from sandwich makers to dog sitters. Reform is necessary to make sure that an economy that provides little protection from employers who want to change employees gives similar flexibility to employees who want to change employers.

Second, like health care, other basic working benefits—from child care to sick leave to retirement benefits—need to be decoupled from the work place. Allowing people to switch jobs, start their own enterprises, or embark on new careers without putting their personal safety net at risk is critical for promoting social mobility and economic opportunity in our Internet era. We cannot turn back the clock to an era where workers had a long-term and stable relationship with a single employer (leaving aside the question of whether such an era was more desirable). [See Nick Hanauer and David Rolf, “Shared Security, Shared Growth.” ]

Overall, policies that allow workers to switch jobs as they acquire new skills and as technology changes will promote social mobility and decrease the unequalizing elements of the Internet era.

A New Progressive Digital Consensus

Universal broadband access, free public Wi-Fi, common-sense regulation, widespread high-quality online learning and training, and policies that support a mobile workforce are just a few of the Internet-related policies that will harness the power of that medium to be an equalizing force in our society. Two decades ago, progressives might have plausibly believed that unleashing the Internet was, by itself, enough to bring about the kind of social change we seek. Twenty years later, we certainly know better.

Ronald Klain served as the White House Ebola response coordinator from October 2014 through February 2015. He serves as an adviser to the Skoll Global Threats Fund Project on Ending Pandemics.

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Effects of the lack of Internet access

Rural communities remain isolated from the outside world because they have limited means of electronic information dissemination. If such access were provided, it could somewhat improve their connection to the ever-changing world.

There are reasons why this Internet access is uncommon in rural areas. These include the lack of adequate infrastructure to house and power, another reason is the cost of implementation and maintenance.

Although the cost of providing ICT to these rural residents is high, the long-term results are very beneficial to all stakeholders. Especially if the processes that ensure the continuity of maintaining Internet access are put in place.

So how does access, or lack of access, affect children?

• Lack of Internet access limits children’s ability to learn outside of the classroom.
• They lag behind their peers in first-world countries who have access to the Internet from an early age and thus have a relative level of knowledge that sets them apart.
• The lack of Internet access leaves them in the dark about new career paths that would be better suited to their innate abilities.
• The lack of Internet access deprives them of the ability to navigate and compete in the modern world, depriving them of their future.

This problem requires effective solutions to level the playing field for children, and it is up to leaders to bring about these changes.

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Essay On Internet for Students and Children

500+ words essay on internet.

We live in the age of the internet. Also, it has become an important part of our life that we can’t live without it. Besides, the internet is an invention of high-end science and modern technology . Apart from that, we are connected to internet 24×7. Also, we can send big and small messages and information faster than ever. In this essay on the Internet, we are going to discuss various things related to the internet.

Reach of Internet

It is very difficult to estimate the area that the internet cover. Also, every second million people remain connected to it with any problem or issue. Apart from that, just like all the things the internet also has some good and bad effect on the life of people. So the first thing which we have to do is learn about the good and bad effect of the internet.

Good effects of the internet mean all those things that the internet make possible. Also, these things make our life easier and safer.

Bad effects of the internet mean all those things that we can no longer do because of the internet. Also, these things cause trouble for oneself and others too.

You can access in any corner of the world. Also, it is very easy to use and manage. In today’s world, we cannot imagine our life without it.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Uses Of Internet

From the time it first came into existence until now the internet has completed a long journey. Also, during this journey, the internet has adopted many things and became more user-friendly and interactive. Besides, every big and small things are available on internet and article or material that you require can be obtainable from internet.

Tim Berners-Lee can be called one of the main father of internet as he invented/discovered the WWW (World Wide Web) which is used on every website. Also, there are millions of pages and website on the internet that it will take you years to go through all of them.

The Internet can be used to do different things like you can learn, teach, research, write, share, receive, e-mail , explore, and surf the internet.

Read Essay on Technology here

Convenience Due To Internet

Because of internet, our lives have become more convenient as compared to the times when we don’t have internet. Earlier, we have to stand in queues to send mails (letters), for withdrawing or depositing money, to book tickets, etc. but after the dawn of the internet, all these things become quite easy. Also, we do not have to waste our precious time standing in queues.

Also, the internet has contributed a lot to the environment as much of the offices (government and private), school and colleges have become digital that saves countless paper.

Although, there is no doubt that the internet had made our life easier and convenient but we can’t leave the fact that it has caused many bigger problems in the past. And with the speed, we are becoming addict to it a day in will come when it will become our basic necessity.

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ADVERTORIAL | Lack of Internet access poses challenge to online learning

On Monday, October 5, the new school term reopened for thousands of students at the primary and secondary levels. However, it was under a blended approach, which included online learning, lessons broadcast on free-to-air television and cable channels; as well as the distribution of learning kits.

While educators and parents are welcoming this new approach, which was implemented by the Government due to the spike in coronavirus cases; as the country goes through the community spread phase of the pandemic, they have cited challenges that will affect thousands of students.

“The big technological challenge is Internet provision,” Jasford Gabriel, president of the Jamaica Teachers' Association (JTA), said. “The fact that we are away from the physical plant, shifts the focus again in terms of connectivity across the country. We would have seen from recent studies that it is roughly a third of the student population across the country who had regular and consistent connectivity during the period between March and July 2020.”

Mr Gabriel noted that while students may have the devices, they may not be able to access the lessons due to connectivity. He pointed out that there will also be challenges with the other approaches, such as televised lessons and learning kits.

“This will not go a far way in terms of bridging the gaps that exist, because students are at home at different levels across the system. Therefore, if it is not live teaching, they are still going to be falling further behind. Hence, the biggest challenge that we face right now is one of connectivity, and we must move at full speed to address this problem and cover the rural areas across the system,” he pointed out.

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Another challenge, which the JTA president highlighted, was the provision of electronic gadgets to students to access online classes.

“We have more than 600,000 students up to the high-school level in the system; and based on the Caribbean Policy Research Institute’s studies, only approximately 200,000 of them have gadgets which can access online learning. Therefore, although the ministry is supporting 40,000 tablets for the Programme of Advancement Through Health and Education (PATH) students in primary schools and another 25,000 in high schools, plus giving to an additional 20,000 students to support purchase of laptops and so on, it is still a small percentage in terms of those who require equipment to be able to properly connect with online teaching. Hence, this again is something that we will need to address over time,” he explained.

Weighing in on some of the challenges, Kathryn Chin See, lead research analyst in innovation at MC Systems, stated that there has been some improvement in connectivity during the last six months, with ISPs bolstering broadband services; and investment being made by the private and public sectors, in laptops and tablets to start the new school year.

“However, it is not enough, and many children are still disconnected from their classrooms. Access to devices and data are vital. The Government of Jamaica has put the wheels in motion for the relevant agencies to lay the foundation for increased accessibility to broadband Internet across Jamaica, but this is only one piece of the puzzle. Laptops/tablets are needed to access content; and these devices need to be easy, and affordable, to acquire for all Jamaicans,” she pointed out.

We need corporate partners to assist

However, Mr Gabriel maintains that the Government cannot do it alone. He said corporate Jamaica should also assist.

“One ready way right now is to provide technological support to schools. The Government will never be able to provide all students with technological resources,” he maintained.

One such school and community which believes in establishing these partnerships to address the challenges is the Woodford Primary School and the Woodford Community Action Group (WCAG), located in the hills of the Blue Mountains in East Rural St Andrew.

Recognising that students at the small rural school could potentially be disadvantaged with the new form of teaching, the WCAG and the school sought the assistance of the JN Foundation to provide 15 tablets to assist the students, who are from humble backgrounds, in the upcoming school year.

“What we received from the JN Foundation is a good kick-start, which has laid the platform and given us the impetus to move forward, and I’m sure more parents will come on board,” Cedric Pascoe, president of the WCAG, informed.

“It might seem like a drop in the bucket, but trust me, a great seed has been planted,” he said, noting that the organisation plans to do other fundraising activities to acquire more resources for the school.

He also informed that tablets will be shared among the students, on a rotation basis, so most of the students benefit.

Onyka Barrett, general manager at the JN Foundation, said that the Foundation was happy to assist the school with the needed resources.

“The challenges being faced by our schools and students at this time are great, but I believe that through partnership and using innovative ideas, we can jointly surmount the challenge. Using the rotation model, it is our hope that the gift will enable the students to participate in online classes. One of the priority areas of the JN Foundation is education. We believe in providing the necessary support to our students, to give them the opportunity to excel,” she affirmed.

Teachers are prepared for online teaching

JTA President Gabriel noted that one of the positives of the reopening of the new school term is that teachers are more prepared to deliver classes online. He said there has been extensive training in terms of teachers manipulating the learning-management systems to deliver the classes online.

“In excess of 20,000 teachers would have been trained by the Ministry of Education and the Jamaica Teaching Council. And, I am positive that the teachers are as prepared as possible, hence this development approach should be continued over time,” he maintained.

Send feedback on this article to: [email protected] .

• «Virgin Atlantic is back! - Airline returns to Jamaica with aircraft equipped with electrostatic fogging system
• ‘Never give up!’ - Mayor of St Ann’s Bay urges students to adapt to the new method of learning »

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How might internet connectivity affect health care access?

By Krutika Amin ,  Matthew Rae Twitter ,  Giorlando Ramirez , and  Cynthia Cox Twitter   KFF

December 14, 2020

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Social distancing recommendations have led many health providers to increasingly deliver care through telehealth services. The precipitous increase in telehealth is in contrast to the year prior to the pandemic when relatively few enrollees utilized telehealth services. There has been tremendous interest from health care providers, regulators, and employers on how to meet the needs of patients despite disruptions arising from the pandemic. Telehealth encompasses a broad range of provider-patient communication through online portals, and audio- or video-enabled tools. Our prior analysis surveyed some of the policy and patient-level considerations that are influencing how telehealth is being adopted.

Thus far into the pandemic, governments and payers have attempted to increase access to telehealth through regulatory and payment changes. For example, Medicare began reimbursing for telehealth services in response to the COVID-19 pandemic to encourage increased utilization of telehealth. For the duration of the pandemic, Medicare is also reimbursing audio-only services for individuals in remote areas and without access to internet for video communication. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) have also incentivized private payers to cover telehealth services during the pandemic through other payment programs, such as the risk adjustment program for the individual and small group markets.

Beyond changes to payment and reimbursement policy, the continued use and expansion of telehealth services will depend on patients’ familiarity with the technology, their access to the internet, and how the availability of telehealth services is communicated to enrollees. This brief uses data from the 2019 American Community Survey (ACS) to estimate how many individuals in the U.S. had access to the internet at home in 2019. While households without internet access may have acquired access during the course of the last year, internet access prior to 2020 is suggestive of some of the disparities in individuals’ access to communication technology and might inform discussions on extending the availability of telehealth services.

25 million Americans lack access to internet at home

25 million (8%) people in the U.S. did not have internet access at home in 2019. Across all households, 78% of Americans had access to broadband including satellite, cable, fiber optic, or DSL service connection at home. 14 million people did not have equipment capable of playing video, such as a laptop, pc computer, smartphone, tablet, or other device.

A higher proportion of Hispanic and Black Americans did not have internet access at home in 2019

A larger share of Hispanic and Black Americans did not have access to the internet at home. There were also significant differences by age, with 28% of Black seniors and 24% of Hispanics seniors lacking internet access at home (compared to 18% of all seniors).

Almost 1 in 5 seniors do not have internet access at home  

There were large disparities in the percent of people without internet access at home by age. Just 5% percent of people under age 55 lacked access to the internet at home in 2019. A higher share of older age groups did not have access to the internet. Among those ages 65 and over, almost 1 in 5 did not have internet access at home. That large shares of older adults lack access to telehealth services during the pandemic is concerning because older adults are at a higher risk of adverse events due to a COVID-19 infection, and also more likely to need medical services generally.

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Almost 1 in 5 americans living in poverty lack access to the internet at home.

Almost 1 in 5 people with incomes below the federal poverty level (FPL) lacked internet access at home in 2019— a rate substantially higher than that of higher income Americans.

People on Medicaid and Medicare make up two-thirds of those without access to the internet at home

A higher share of people covered by public insurance programs like Medicaid or Medicare lack internet access than those insured through employers or direct purchase (individual market) plans. In all, almost 1 in 3 Americans who lack internet access at home are covered by Medicare, and a similar share are covered by Medicaid.

Rural Americans are almost twice as likely to lack internet access as those living in urban areas

As one might expect, internet access is more prevalent in metropolitan areas than non-metro areas with close to twice the share of the population not having access to the internet at home in non-metro areas.

The social distancing measures implemented during COVID-19 have required many health services to be offered virtually rather than in-person. For telehealth services, internet access can be critical. However, 2019 data suggest a significant portion of Americans might not have internet access at home. Disparities in internet access across the populations may pose additional health care access concerns during the pandemic. That lack of internet access is most prevalent in rural areas and among historically underrepresented racial and ethnic groups is concerning, as this could worsen existing health care disparities. Additionally, elderly Americans may especially require access to health care services virtually while in-person care is being deferred because the elderly are at a higher risk of becoming seriously ill if infected with COVID-19 and are generally more likely to need medical services. However, nearly 20% of elderly Americans do not have internet access.

This chart collection is based on KFF’s analysis of the 2019 American Community Survey (ACS), 1-year file. The ACS includes a 1% sample of the US population. We excluded people living in noninstitutional group quarters such as college dormitories and residential treatment centers.

The ACS asks: “At this house, apartment, or mobile home – do you or any member of this household have access to the Internet?” Those who reported having internet service, with or without paying a cell phone company or internet service provider, were categorized as having access to the internet. For more information on the ACS survey questions on internet access, see here . For information on how measures of internet access may vary, see here .

We note that the share of the non-institutionalized population in the U.S. without access to the internet at home or without video-capable equipment has steadily decreased between 2016 and 2019. The share of those without access to the internet decreased by three percentage points from 11% of the population to 8% from 2016-2019. Similarly, the share of those without video-capable equipment decreased by 3% percentage points, from 7% to 4% of people. So, the share of population without access to the internet at home has likely decreased in 2020 but a substantial portion of the non-institutionalized population in the U.S. likely continues to lack access to the internet at home in 2020.

The burden of medical debt in the United States

How does cost affect access to healthcare?

The ACS asks respondents about their health insurance coverage at the time of the survey. Respondents may report having more than one type of coverage; however, individuals are sorted into only one category of health insurance. For details on coverage type definitions, see here .

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Does the Internet Bring People Closer Together or Further Apart? The Impact of Internet Usage on Interpersonal Communications

1 Business School, Shandong University, Weihai 264209, China

Guangjie Ning

2 HSBC Business School, Peking University, Shenzhen 518055, China

Qianqian Liu

Associated data.

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS, http://cgss.ruc.edu.cn/English/Home.htm (accessed on 25 September 2022). Restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for this study. Data are also available from the authors with the permission of the CGSS.

The complementarity interference (CI) model suggests that the Internet may either inhibit or facilitate interpersonal communications. This paper empirically examines the impact of Internet usage on interpersonal interactions, using a micro dataset from China to answer whether the Internet brings people closer together or further apart. The empirical results demonstrate, first, that Internet usage significantly increases both the time and frequency of people’s communications with their family and friends, rather than causing them to feel more disconnected and isolated. Holding other factors constant, for each one-standard-deviation increase in Internet usage, weekly communications with family members increases by an average of 102.150 min, while there is an average increase of 54.838 min in interactions with friends. These findings as to its positive effects are robust when using other regression models and interpersonal contact measures, as well as the instrumental variable method. Second, Internet usage also contributes to decreased loneliness; it exerts this effect primarily by improving people’s interactions with their family members. However, communications with friends do not significantly mediate such impacts. Third, the positive role of Internet usage on communications is more prominent for people with more frequent online socialization and self-presentation, better online skills, younger age, higher educational level, and who are living in urban areas. In addition, the beneficial effects of Internet usage are larger for communications with family members in the case of migrants. Therefore, in the context of the rapid development of information technology, the network infrastructure should be improved to make better use of the Internet to facilitate interpersonal communications and promote people’s wellness.

1. Introduction

Whether Internet usage brings people closer together or further apart is an important but unanswered question. With the rapid development of information technology, the Internet has been widely used in various areas almost all over the world. According to Internet World Stats, compared with the year 2000, the number of global Internet users in 2022 has increased by 14.16 times. By 31 July 2022, there were 5.47 billion Internet users in the world out of the 7.93 billion global population, and the penetration rate has steadily risen to 68.98% [ 1 ]. The rapid taking up of the Internet has profoundly changed human society in multiple aspects. On the macro level, it has reduced transaction costs, promoted industrial upgrading [ 2 , 3 ], and driven economic development [ 4 , 5 ]. On the micro level, the Internet has tremendous impacts on people’s daily lives and has changed their lifestyles, habits, attitudes and preferences [ 6 , 7 , 8 ]. However, the impact of Internet usage on interpersonal communications is still unclear. The complementarity interference (CI) model suggests that the Internet may either inhibit or facilitate interpersonal interactions.

On the one hand, in terms of the interference aspects, there may be a crowding-out effect of Internet usage on interpersonal contacts. Using the Internet may divert people’s attention from communicating with family and friends to other activities, such as playing online games, surfing websites, watching online videos, and live streaming. This may lead people to ignore real-life communications [ 9 , 10 , 11 ]. In addition, excessive addiction to the Internet can also trigger people’s depression, anxiety, and emotional impulsivity, resulting in a poor psychological state and even social phobias [ 12 , 13 ]. This may also cause people to reduce their interpersonal interactions. Based on this finding, it has been hypothesized that the more time spent on the Internet, the fewer interpersonal communications there will be.

On the other hand, in terms of complementarity, the Internet may facilitate interpersonal communications by reducing communication costs and providing opportunities for teleconferencing. Before the popularization of modern information technologies, people could only communicate by meeting face to face. Later, the development of communication technologies, such as the telegraph and telephone, eliminated the geographical boundaries of interpersonal contacts and made remote communication a reality. However, traditional communication technologies can only transmit information via voice and text messages and have the drawback of high cost. The Internet has greatly reduced the cost of communications, shortened the distances between disparate groups, and has even made it possible for people to meet via video conferencing [ 14 ]. In addition, Internet technologies have brought a variety of emerging communication platforms, such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Zoom, and WeChat, helping people to communicate more conveniently at a much lower cost [ 15 , 16 , 17 ]. On the basis of this evolution, it is hypothesized that the more time people spend on the Internet, the more interpersonal communications there are.

Interpersonal communications are essential to building social networks, which is also a necessary channel to help people establish social trust and enhance their sense of belonging and happiness [ 18 , 19 , 20 ]. Therefore, in the context of the rapid development of Internet technology, it is of great importance to clarify the impact of the Internet on interpersonal communications. If Internet usage can facilitate interpersonal interactions at a lower cost and in a more convenient way, then we should make full use of this technology to promote communications. Conversely, if the Internet reduces interpersonal communications, then necessary measures should be taken to alleviate its negative effects on interpersonal interactions while utilizing the benefits of the Internet in other aspects. Therefore, this paper aims to empirically examine the impact of Internet usage on interpersonal communications, using the Chinese General Social Survey. The robustness and endogeneity of the results are also tested from multiple perspectives. On this basis, we further explore the impact of Internet usage on people’s feelings of loneliness and the mediating role of interpersonal communications. In addition, the heterogeneities of the Internet’s effects are systematically investigated.

Compared with the existing literature, the contributions of this paper are mainly reflected in two aspects. First, this paper enriches the research concerning the Internet’s impacts on people. Most of the existing literature examines the influence of the Internet from the points of view of working conditions, psychological states, emotions, health, preferences, and lifestyles [ 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 ], while little research has been conducted concerning its effect on interpersonal communications. Second, this paper deepens our understanding of the influencing factors of interpersonal interactions, from the new perspective of modern information technology. Existing studies in the field of social communications have mainly focused on the effects of demographic characteristics, social identities, culture, and so on [ 25 , 26 , 27 ], lacking any assessment of the impact of the Internet.

This paper aims to examine the impact of Internet usage on interpersonal communications, as well as to investigate the heterogeneities in its effect, to systematically answer whether the Internet brings people closer together or pushes them further apart. This study is carried out following the research logic of “literature review—theoretical framework—empirical tests—further discussion—heterogeneity analysis”. A systematic literature review is given in Section 2 . Based on the literature, a theoretical framework using the complementarity interference (CI) model is presented in Section 3 , wherein the hypotheses are proposed. To test the theory, the data, variables, and empirical results are presented in Section 4 and Section 5 . Section 6 further discusses the impact of Internet usage on loneliness and the mediating role of interpersonal communications, as well as the Internet’s effects in other respects. Section 7 explores the heterogeneities of the impact of Internet usage. Section 8 summarizes all the conclusions drawn in the above sections, Section 9 identifies the theoretical and practical implications, and Section 10 discusses the study’s limitations and further research directions.

2. Literature Review

2.1. the impact of internet usage on people’s lives.

With the advancement of information technology, the Internet has become more and more indispensable in people’s daily lives. The Internet has brought tremendous positive impacts in multiple aspects. For example, Internet-based telecommuting is becoming a convenient and increasingly popular mode of work around the world [ 28 ]. Moreover, studies have found that self-presentation on social media helps users to achieve higher psychological well-being [ 29 ]. Heterogeneity analysis demonstrates that the positive impact of self-presentation on social media on psychological well-being is more significant in those with higher self-esteem [ 30 ]. Through online comparisons, people are able to generate benign envy, which is helpful for inspiration [ 22 , 31 ].

However, it has also been found that the Internet has mixed and heterogeneous impacts on its users. For example, while for girls, daily Internet use was not associated with higher levels of depressive symptoms [ 32 ], for boys, a positive association between the two factors did exist [ 33 ]. Interestingly, a study based on a Chinese sample found a significantly positive association between Internet use and mental health [ 34 ]. Many studies have also identified jealousy as one of the main symptoms of poorer states of mental health resulting from Internet use [ 35 , 36 , 37 ]. In addition to psychological health, existing studies find a significant negative association between mobile Internet use and self-rated health [ 34 ]. Moreover, online games are one of the most significant applications of the Internet and their impacts are controversial. It is found that frequent exposure to violent online games tends to be associated with an increase in aggressive behavior, desensitization, and physiological arousal, while also showing a decrease in empathy [ 38 ]. However, other studies have found that the correlation between online games and aggressive behaviors is not significant [ 23 , 24 ]. In addition, practical games are widely used in multiple areas of education, healthcare, sustainability projects, training, and consultancy, but their effectiveness varies due to differences in the designs [ 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 ].

Furthermore, Internet usage has also led to the emergence of Internet addiction, a new clinical disorder [ 44 ]. The COVID-19 pandemic has further increased people’s Internet online usage and a rising prevalence of Internet addiction has been reported among people in various occupations [ 45 , 46 ]. Although Internet addiction has not been recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the American Psychological Association (APA), existing studies have shown that it is a new type of serious mental disorder [ 47 ]. There are heterogeneities in the severity and prevalence of Internet addiction. Regionally, Internet addiction has a greater impact on Internet users in developed areas, such as in Europe and the United States [ 48 , 49 ]. Studies also found that those with greater neuroticism are more likely to become addicted to the Internet [ 50 , 51 ]. Heterogeneity also exists in terms of gender, age, and social class. For example, people with a higher social class are less likely to experience Internet addiction [ 49 , 52 ].

2.2. Factors Affecting Interpersonal Communications

Interpersonal communication is a complex social process and is closely related to people’s well-being. Evidence shows that those with a high level of communication skills have a better mental health status compared to their counterparts [ 53 , 54 ]. Other studies have found that higher interpersonal stress is associated with stronger symptoms of insomnia, which, in turn, is associated with poorer mental health status [ 55 , 56 ]. In addition to its important impact on the psychological well-being of individuals, interpersonal communication also plays an essential role in building strong family relationships [ 57 , 58 ]. The importance of interpersonal communication is also reflected in many other aspects, including improving learning ability, obtaining job opportunities, promoting career development, etc. [ 59 , 60 ].

Regarding the factors affecting interpersonal communications, studies have found that age, gender, culture, social background, working characteristics, geographical distance, and technology exert a level of influence [ 25 , 58 , 61 ], although there is disagreement about the exact impact of these factors. For example, ethnic background affects interpersonal communications to some extent, mainly because people with different backgrounds are more likely to experience cultural misunderstandings with each other [ 26 ]. It has already been mentioned above that interpersonal communication can influence mental health and physical activities. Likewise, the two factors also affect interpersonal interaction. A study using a sample of college students found that social anxiety had a negative impact on their interpersonal communication skills, while psychological resilience played a mediating role between them, and perceived social support from teachers and classmates further moderated their psychological resilience [ 62 ]. It was also found that physical activity can facilitate family communication among family members because it provides more opportunities for them to meet [ 27 , 63 ].

In general, existing studies demonstrate that interpersonal communications are of great importance in promoting people’s mental health and helping families to build resilience. At the same time, interpersonal communications are conducive to acquiring new knowledge and playing a better role in both the family and society. Moreover, demographic, work, human capital, and social characteristics are the main factors that influence interpersonal communication.

2.3. Possible Relationship between Internet Usage and Interpersonal Communication

As mentioned above, interpersonal communication plays an important role in people’s lives, work, and careers; nowadays, it can be achieved by face-to-face interactions as well as via the Internet. At the same time, the Internet has both pros and cons in many aspects. So how does the Internet impact interpersonal communications? Based on existing research, it is believed that frequent exposure to the Internet distracts users from their offline lives [ 64 ]. For example, the use of mobile Internet via smartphones distracts parents from spending time with their children and undermines the communication between parents and children [ 65 ]. Furthermore, another study shows that children’s Internet use is also associated with a decrease in their participation in family activities. When people are overly dependent on the Internet, online activities can replace offline social connections with their family members and friends [ 11 , 66 ]. Internet addiction has also been proven to lead to a reduction in people’s social and interpersonal skills [ 47 , 67 ], which may further reduce their communications with family and friends. Although the effect of Internet usage on interpersonal communications has not been directly studied, the aforementioned studies imply that time spent on the Internet may crowd out interpersonal interaction, to some extent.

However, other studies point to the possible positive effects of Internet usage on interpersonal communication. Thanks to the development of Internet technology, today, text messages and voice calls are no longer the main methods for people of all ages [ 15 , 16 ]. Social networking software and group chats have become popular communication platforms [ 27 , 68 ]. Many studies have found that the use of the Internet effectively brings much convenience to interpersonal connections for both the young and old cohorts [ 69 , 70 ], which in turn can benefit people’s well-being [ 71 ]. Indeed, compared with traditional communication methods, such as letters, telegraphs and phone calls, the Internet provides innovative means of communication, such as video meetings, in a more convenient and cost-saving way. For example, WhatsApp has been shown to facilitate intergenerational family interactions [ 17 ]. Facebook helps to maintain interpersonal relationships for those who have difficulty making social connections, especially for people with low self-esteem [ 72 ].

Overall, the Internet has changed people’s lives tremendously, although its effects on interpersonal communications have not been systematically tested. In this context, it can be hypothesized from the existing research that the Internet may crowd out interpersonal communications [ 47 , 64 , 65 , 66 , 67 ]. Nevertheless, many studies believe that the Internet reduces the cost of communication between people, offering more diverse and convenient ways to make contact [ 15 , 16 , 68 , 69 , 70 , 71 , 72 ]. Therefore, it can also be speculated that the Internet may shorten the distances between people, thereby promoting interpersonal communication. However, even with theoretical analysis and the existing literature, the impact of Internet usage on interpersonal interactions is still unclear. In view of this gap in the literature, we aim to systematically investigate how the Internet affects interpersonal communication.

3. Theoretical Framework

3.1. internet usage.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of Internet usage on interpersonal communication. For the explanatory variable, time spent on the Internet is the most direct and important indicator by which to measure Internet usage; it is very intuitive and is widely used [ 11 , 67 , 73 ]. In addition, it has been applied not only to characterize how people generally use the Internet in their daily life but also to measure possible excessive Internet use and Internet addiction [ 74 ].

3.2. Interpersonal Communications

Studies have shown that communications with family members and friends are most important in people’s daily interpersonal interactions [ 75 , 76 , 77 ]. In the benchmarking analysis, time spent on communications with family and friends is used to reflect interpersonal interactions. Meanwhile, considering that the frequency of interactions is also a very important indicator for interpersonal contact, this is used for further robustness analysis. Both kinds of indicators have been applied to measure the levels of interpersonal contact in existing research [ 78 , 79 , 80 , 81 ].

The complementarity interference (CI) model [ 53 , 82 ] of the Internet, as illustrated in Figure 1 , provides a theoretical framework for analyzing the relationship between Internet usage and interpersonal communication. Based on the following theoretical analysis, Internet usage may either facilitate or deteriorate interpersonal communication.

The theoretical framework of the study.

3.3. Interference Aspects of Internet Usage

3.3.1. distracting attention.

Studies have confirmed a significantly negative correlation between online and offline activities [ 83 ]. The Internet may divert people’s attention away from interpersonal interactions to online activities, including video games, online news, short videos, live streaming, etc., leading users to neglect communications with family and friends in real life [ 10 , 66 ]. This suggests that Internet usage may shift people’s attention; there may be a crowding-out effect of Internet usage on interpersonal communication. In addition, research has also found a negative correlation between Internet usage and time spent accompanying family members [ 11 ]. Although they do not specifically examine how the Internet affects family communications, the findings imply that time spent online may reduce interpersonal interactions inside the family, to some extent. In addition, in parent–child contact, the parent’s attention is easily distracted by online activities via smartphones, resulting in compromised parent-child bonds [ 65 ].

3.3.2. Reducing Social Skills

It has been shown that people tend to establish fewer offline social networks when they are overly dependent on the Internet [ 68 ]. This may be due to the fact that Internet usage reduces people’s social and interpersonal skills [ 67 ], thereby decreasing their communications and interactions. Studies have also found that among adolescents with a higher prevalence of Internet addiction, social skills are generally poorer [ 47 ]. Moreover, Internet addiction is proven to be closely related to attention deficit disorders, further causing social phobia [ 84 ]. Another study has identified that inadequate social skills and social fears decrease interpersonal communication [ 85 ]. Consequently, Internet use may hinder interpersonal interactions by reducing people’s social skills.

3.3.3. Increasing Negative Emotions

Internet usage may trigger depression, anxiety, and impulsiveness in some people, resulting in poor psychological states and negative emotions [ 10 ]. This may also further lead to a decrease in interpersonal interactions [ 11 , 73 ]. In addition, compared with face-to-face communications, Internet-based interpersonal interactions are disadvantaged in terms of emotional transmission and are, thus, less effective in enhancing effective communication [ 53 , 83 ]. Another source of negative feelings brought about by the Internet is peer pressure. Nowadays, people tend to share their daily lives via online platforms, inadvertently causing them to make comparisons with the lives of others. This makes people more pessimistic about their body image and standard of living, resulting in increased anxiety [ 86 ]. The nervousness caused by peer pressure on the Internet leads users to be more reluctant to communicate with others in the real world.

Based on the interference aspects of Internet usage, Hypothesis 1 can be proposed:

The more hours people use the Internet, the less time they spend on interpersonal communications.

3.4. Complementarity Aspects of Internet Usage

3.4.1. reducing the cost of interpersonal communications.

Before the popularization of modern information technologies, people could only communicate face-to-face. Later, the telegraph and telephone eliminated the geographical boundaries of interpersonal contact and made remote communication a reality [ 87 ]. However, traditional communication techniques face the problem of high costs. The Internet has greatly reduced both the time and money needed for instant communication, narrowed the distances between people, and made simultaneous communication affordable. For example, compared with telephone calls, Internet-based voice calls and online meetings cost much less in time and money for people to communicate [ 14 , 88 ].

3.4.2. Enriching Communication Channels and Modes

Traditional communication technologies mainly transmit voice and text, but it is difficult for them to simulate face-to-face interactions. The Internet has spawned a variety of emerging communication channels and modes, such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Zoom, and WeChat, which can help people to replicate face-to-face interactions more realistically online [ 15 , 16 ]. For example, during the COVID-19 epidemic, various network platforms facilitated remote working and learning [ 89 ]. Without the Internet, this would have been almost unachievable. In addition, Internet-based communications help to improve the quality of people’s long-distance interactions compared to traditional methods. For example, it has been established that WhatsApp, an instant online messaging tool, can promote intergenerational communication among family members and help them build better bridges of understanding with each other [ 17 ].

3.4.3. Building Wider Social Networks

The Internet helps people overcome communication barriers in real life, especially the fear of communicating with strangers, thereby establishing broader social networks [ 90 ]. Studies have found that Internet-based social networking platforms are effective in helping people share updates and, thus, build wider social connections across age, race, gender, geography, and social class boundaries [ 70 ]. Moreover, these enlarged social networks also create positive spillover effects in other aspects, improving people’s welfare. For example, people can use social media to communicate with others on health topics, which helps them become more health-conscious and intrinsically motivated to participate in physical exercises [ 69 ]. Therefore, online social connections contribute to improving people’s well-being, as well as promoting interpersonal communication and interactions [ 71 , 91 ].

Based on the complementarity aspects of Internet usage, Hypothesis 2 can be proposed:

The more hours people use the Internet, the more time they spend on interpersonal communications.

4. Data and Measures

4.1. data source.

The data used in this paper come from the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS), one of the most important and nationally representative academic surveys in China. The CGSS aims to systematically and comprehensively investigate the social and economic situations of the Chinese people. CGSS is part of the world General Social Survey group and the sampling of CGSS is based on a multi-stage stratified design. The National Survey Research Center at the Renmin University of China (NSRC) has organized the Chinese Social Survey Network (CSSN), including 49 universities and provincial social science academies. Detailed information regarding CGSS can be accessed via http://cgss.ruc.edu.cn/English/Home.htm (accessed on 25 September 2022). The reason for using CGSS is mainly due to its three advantages. First, CGSS surveys people’s interpersonal communication and the factors influencing it in the extension module, which is a convenient way to construct the explained variables and control variables. Second, CGSS contains information on the respondents’ habits of Internet usage, which facilitates the construction of an explanatory variable for this research. Third, CGSS contains the ISCO-2008 (International Standard Classification of Occupations, 2008) codes of the respondents’ occupations, which helps us construct an instrumental variable, based on job characteristics, to deal with the endogeneity problem. Since the key explained and explanatory variables used in this paper are only available in the extension module of CGSS in 2017, the 2017-wave dataset is used for this research.

4.2. Measures

The main explained variable in this paper is the time spent on interpersonal communication by the respondents. Communication with family members and friends is most important in people’s daily interactions [ 75 , 76 ]; therefore, we constructed indicators for communications with family and friends, denoted as “family communication” and “friends communication”, respectively. The two variables come from the following questions in CGSS’s extension module, “How many hours do you spend on communicating with your family per week on average?” and “How many hours do you spend on communicating with your friends per week on average?”, respectively. In the robustness analysis, other indicators of interpersonal communications were also constructed. The explanatory variable of this paper is the time spent using the Internet, denoted as “Internet usage”. This variable is derived from the respondents’ answers to the question: “How many hours do you use the Internet per week on average?”.

Based on the relevant literature concerning the factors influencing interpersonal communications [ 61 , 62 ], in order to avoid the bias of omitted variables, this paper controls those factors related to interpersonal communications as comprehensively as possible in the following six aspects. (1) Basic demographic characteristics, including gender, age and the squared term of age. (2) Working characteristics, including personal income, whether the participant is working in the system and whether they have a pension and medical insurance. (3) Human capital characteristics, including educational level and health status. (4) Social characteristics, including whether the participant belongs to any ethnic minorities, have certain religious beliefs, or if they are a Communist Party of China (CPC) member. (5) Family characteristics include family size and the number of children. (6) Regional characteristics include provincial dummies. Detailed descriptions and statistics of the above variables are given in Table 1 .

Summary statistics.

Notes: The education level is classified from 1 to 13: 1—without any education, 2—kindergarten, 3—primary school, 4—junior high school, 5—vocational high school, 6—ordinary high school, 7—technical secondary school, 8—technical high school, 9—junior college (adult education), 10—junior college (regular education), 11—undergraduate (adult education), 12—undergraduate (regular education), 13—postgraduate and above. Health status is based on the self-rated health levels from 1 to 5: 1—very unhealthy, 2—relatively unhealthy, 3—medium, 4—relatively healthy, 5—very healthy.

5.1. Benchmark Results

To investigate the impact of Internet usage on interpersonal communications, this paper first constructs the following ordinary least squares (OLS) benchmark econometric model.

In model (1), I n t e r p e r s o n a l _ c o m m u n i c a t i o n i and I n t e r n e t _ u s a g e i represent the time spent on interpersonal communications and Internet usage, respectively, by the respondent, i . The time spent on communicating with family and friends is used to characterize I n t e r p e r s o n a l _ c o m m u n i c a t i o n i . x i ′ is the vector of the series of control variables described above. d p is the provincial fixed effect. This paper estimates the relationship between interpersonal communications and Internet usage with this model.

Table 2 shows the regression results, based on the above OLS model. Columns (1)–(3) demonstrate the results of the estimations concerning communicating with family members and columns (4)–(6) are estimated results concerning communicating with friends. It is clear that Internet usage is significantly and positively related to the time spent on communications with both family members and friends. Here, we conduct regression analysis by sequentially including the controls of different characteristics, with the aim of exploring whether the relationship between Internet usage and interpersonal communications is affected by other factors. Table 1 shows that, by gradually adding control variables from different aspects, the estimated coefficients of Internet use are stable at around 0.095 and 0.051 for the two explained variables, respectively. Moreover, all the estimates are significantly positive at the 1% level. This suggests that the more time people spend on the Internet, the more time they spend interacting with family and friends, supporting Hypothesis 2. It also means that the significant correlation between Internet usage and interpersonal interactions is not affected by other factors and is very robust. The above results prove that Internet usage does not lead to greater alienation among people. On the contrary, the Internet significantly enhances interpersonal communications.

Benchmark results.

Notes: ***, **, and * indicate significance at the levels of 1%, 5%, and 10%, respectively. The values in parentheses are standard errors robust to heteroskedasticity. ‘Yes’ means the corresponding variables are controlled in the regression, while ‘No’ means they are not controlled.

In addition, the benchmark estimates also show that the effect of the Internet on interpersonal interactions is very notable. Holding other factors constant, for each one-standard-deviation increase in Internet usage (17.921 h per week), the weekly communication with family members increases by an average of 102.150 min (17.921 × 0.095 × 60), while there is an average increase of 54.838 min in interactions with friends. This demonstrates that while Internet usage has significantly positive effects on communications with both family and friends, it plays a more prominent role in facilitating interactions among family members.

5.2. Robustness and Endogeneity Checks

In order to examine the robustness of the relationship between Internet usage and interpersonal communications, and to tackle potential endogeneity problems, this paper conducts a series of robustness and endogeneity checks.

5.2.1. Using the Poisson Model

Considering the fact that the dependent variables, which represent the time spent on communicating with family and friends, are discrete non-negative integers and fit the Poisson distribution, we use the Poisson model to conduct the robustness test. Table 3 shows that when using the Poisson model for communications with both family and friends, the estimated coefficients of Internet usage are all significantly positive at the 1% level. In addition, with the controlling characteristics as different aspects, the estimated coefficients of Internet usage fluctuate slightly but are generally very stable. This further confirms that our findings regarding Internet usage promoting people’s interpersonal communications do not rely on the selection of the OLS model.

Robustness checks using the Poisson model.

Notes: *** indicate significance at the levels of 1%, respectively. The values in parentheses are standard errors robust to heteroskedasticity. ‘Yes’ means the corresponding variables are controlled in the regression, while ‘No’ means they are not controlled.

5.2.2. Using Other Indicators of Interpersonal Communication

In benchmark regression, we use the time spent on communications with family and friends to characterize interpersonal interaction. However, there may be measurement errors in some people’s perceptions of time. Furthermore, communication time may not adequately characterize the frequency of interpersonal communications. Based on this theory, to test the robustness of the findings, this paper further uses the frequencies of communication with family and friends as dependent variables, denoted as “Family communication frequency” and “Friends communication frequency”. These are derived from the respondents’ responses to “How often do you keep in touch with your family, on average?” and “How often do you keep in touch with your friends, on average?”. Answers are classified based on an eight-level scale from 1 to 8, representing “never”, “rarely”, “several times a year”, “once a month”, “2–3 times a month”, “once a week”, “several times a week”, and “every day”, respectively. Since they are ordered and explained variables for which the disparities between different levels of the scale are not equivalent, ordered Probit (Oprobit) and Logit (Ologit) models, as well as the OLS model, are used for estimation. The regression results are shown in Table 4 . It is clear that when using these kinds of dependent variables to measure interpersonal communications, and no matter which model is applied, Internet usage has a significantly positive effect on the frequency of people’s interactions with family and friends, which further confirms the robustness of the findings.

Robustness checks, using other indicators of interpersonal communications.

5.2.3. Endogeneity Tests

There may be endogeneity problems in the benchmark estimates, therefore, the significant relationship between Internet usage and interpersonal communications may be a correlation rather than causality. The endogeneity problems may result from two aspects, comprising reverse causality and omitted variable bias. Regarding reverse causality, we suggest that people may use the Internet more frequently because they are more willing to communicate with family members and friends. For example, individuals who live alone, who frequently travel and migrate, may use the Internet because of the need to communicate remotely with their friends and family. With respect to omitted variable bias, although we have controlled as comprehensively as possible those elements that affect interpersonal communications, there may still be factors that are difficult to characterize. In order to examine the causal relationship between Internet usage and interpersonal interactions and to tackle potential endogeneity problems, the following instrumental variable models are applied for carrying out further checks.

A I i is the instrumental variable, which is the degree of artificial intelligence’s application in an individual, i ’s, work. Model (2) performs first-stage regression, using A I i to estimate I n t e r n e t _ u s a g e i . In model (3), second-stage regression is conducted to examine the effect of Internet usage on interpersonal communications, using the predicted values in the first-stage estimation. The A I i indicator comes from Mihaylov and Tijden [ 92 ]. Existing studies have shown that the higher the application of artificial intelligence in their work, the higher the requirements for people’s skills in using the Internet [ 93 ], and thus, the more likely they are to show increased Internet usage. Therefore, the instrumental variable satisfies the correlation requirement. In addition, since artificial intelligence is an exogenous technological change and is, thus, not related to micro individual characteristics, this variable satisfies the exogeneity condition. As shown in Table 5 , results of the instrumental variable method with the two-stage least square (2SLS) method robustly prove that Internet usage has significantly positive impacts on interactions with family members and friends. This means that the significant relationship between Internet usage and interpersonal communications is causal rather than being a simple correlation.

Endogeneity tests: impacts on communications using an instrumental variable.

Notes: *** and ** indicate significance at the levels of 1% and 5%, respectively. The values in parentheses are standard errors robust to heteroskedasticity. ‘Yes’ means the corresponding variables are controlled in the regression, while ‘No’ means they are not controlled.

5.2.4. Missing Data Imputation

There are missing data in this research, with a missing rate of (3740−3507)/3740 = 6.223%. Although it seems that the missing rate is not high, missing data may cause sample selection problems, leading to biased and inconsistent statistical results, because the information may be missing but not at random. Considering that the dataset is cross-sectional rather than longitudinal and when referring to Ibrahim and Molenberghs [ 94 ], Kropko et al. [ 95 ], and Baraldi and Enders [ 96 ], we further tested whether the findings of this paper could be affected by the missing data problem, applying the following widely accepted approach. Specifically, we replace the missing values with the mean of the remaining values. Results using this approach are shown in Table 6 and it is clear that they are consistent with the benchmark estimations in this paper.

Replacing the missing values with the mean of the remaining values (OLS model).

6. Further Discussions

6.1. effects of internet usage on loneliness.

It has been confirmed in the sections above that Internet usage facilitates communications with family and friends. Furthermore, studies have shown that interpersonal communications are beneficial to increasing social support and reducing people’s loneliness [ 97 , 98 , 99 ]. Therefore, we are interested in whether Internet usage helps to reduce loneliness by increasing people’s interpersonal contacts. To test this hypothesis, we use an indicator to characterize loneliness, denoted as “Lonely”. It is taken from respondents’ answers to the question “I feel lonely”, which is based on the Likert scale from 1–5, representing “never”, “seldom”, “sometimes”, “often”, and “frequently”. The larger the values of the two variables, the higher the level of loneliness.

The first columns in Table 7 demonstrate the effect of Internet usage on loneliness, wherein the estimated coefficients of Internet usage are all significantly negative. This indicates that Internet usage significantly reduces loneliness. Meanwhile, columns (2) and (4) in Table 7 are the regression results of the impacts of Internet usage on communication with family members and friends, which are consistent with those in Table 3 . Columns (3) and (5) present the results for when the indicators of family communication and friends communication are further included in regressions. The estimated results in column (3) of Table 7 show that communication with friends does not significantly affect people’s loneliness. However, in column (5), the estimates of family communication are significantly negative at the 1% level, implying that interactions with family help to decrease loneliness. At the same time, after the mediating variables, interpersonal communications are included in the regression, where the estimated coefficients of Internet usage remain significantly negative. Additionally, in column (5) of Table 7 , the absolute values of the Internet usage estimates decrease, further proving that communication with family members plays a mediating role between using the Internet and loneliness. This implies that Internet usage reduces the feeling of loneliness by facilitating communication among family members. Family members are particularly important for Chinese people and the Chinese culture; therefore, relationships among family members have a more prominent impact on personal feelings [ 100 ]. Thus, compared with communication with friends, contacts with family members mediate the impact of the Internet in reducing loneliness more significantly.

Further impacts on loneliness.

6.2. Effects of Internet Usage in the Other Aspects

The above analysis shows the positive impact of the Internet on interpersonal communications, but it is not correct to assume that this usage has only a positive dimension. Further analysis using CGSS data, as shown in column (1) of Table 8 , demonstrates that the more time people spend online, the easier it is to get addicted to the Internet, resulting in spending a longer time online than was planned. In addition, people who frequently use the Internet are more likely to feel anxious if they do not go online for a while (column (2) in Table 8 ). This is consistent with the existing studies, reporting that people tend to have difficulty controlling their time, and it is easier for them to become addicted to the Internet and the online world [ 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 ]. Furthermore, we find that going online reduces the amount of time people spend outdoors (column (3) in Table 8 ) and leads to more family complaints that they spend too much time online (column (4) in Table 8 ). Although we cannot directly verify the effect of Internet usage on face-to-face interpersonal communication, due to data availability, this is an indirect way to test whether Internet use reduces people’s face-to-face contact with the outside world and results in increased complaints from family members. Moreover, in terms of physical health, it was also found that more Internet usage also causes people to have worse eyesight (column (5) in Table 8 ), as well as neck and shoulder pain (column (6) in Table 8 ). The above analysis is based on six Likert 5-point scale variables from the responses to the question, “How do the following descriptions fit your situation?”: “I often spend more time online than I planned”, “If I don’t go online for a while, I will be anxious and restless”, “I spend less time outdoors because of using the Internet”, “My family complains that I spend too much time online”, “My eyesight has become worse because of using the Internet”, “I have neck and shoulder pain because of using the Internet”. Their responses are: “1—very untrue of me”, “2—untrue of me”, “3—neutral”, “4—true of me”, and “5—very true of me”.

Other effects of internet usage (overlong usage and anxiety).

7. Heterogeneity Analysis

This paper further examines the heterogeneities of the impact of Internet usage on communications in different subgroups. First, in terms of the purposes of Internet usage, it is naturally hypothesized that if people use the Internet mainly for working or entertainment, rather than for interpersonal contact, then Internet usage should have no significant effect on their communications with family members and friends. This hypothesis is tested as follows. Specifically, this research divides the sample into subgroups, with different degrees of online social interactions and different preferences for online self-presentation, based on whether respondents frequently use social networking sites (including email, QQ, WeChat, Skype, etc.) to communicate with others, and whether they often post their updates on the social platforms (including WeChat, Moments, Qzone, Weibo, etc.). The regression results of Table 9 show that the impacts of Internet usage on communication with family and friends are only significant among those who often use the Internet to socialize, confirming the above hypothesis. In addition, posting updates regarding life and work via Internet social platforms also brings more online contacts. Table 10 shows that for individuals with a greater online presence, the positive effect of Internet usage on interpersonal communications is more pronounced. This means that for people who are more socially connected to the Internet, online activities significantly promote their interpersonal contacts. The heterogeneity results in this aspect also demonstrate that online social contact facilitates communications with family and friends and further confirm the robustness of the findings of this paper.

Heterogeneity analysis, in terms of online contacts.

Heterogeneity analysis in terms of online posts.

Furthermore, considering that communications via the Internet require certain online skills, it is naturally hypothesized that for individuals with better Internet skills, Internet usage should be more conducive to improving their interpersonal communication. This paper conducts a heterogeneity test for this hypothesis. According to whether the respondents are able to communicate with others proficiently online (the corresponding question in the CGSS questionnaire is: “Do you know how to express your thoughts and proficiently communicate with others online?”), the following subsample analysis is performed. The estimated results in columns (1) and (2) of Table 11 show that in terms of communications with family members, the positive effects of Internet usage are greater and are only statistically significant for those with more online skills. Columns (3) and (4) of Table 11 demonstrate that in terms of communications with friends, the role of Internet usage is significant for the two subgroups, but the estimated coefficient is larger for individuals skilled in online communications. This confirms that the impact of Internet usage on interpersonal contacts is more pronounced for people with better online skills.

Heterogeneity analysis, in terms of Internet skills.

Notes: *** and * indicate significance at the levels of 1% and 10%, respectively. The values in parentheses are standard errors robust to heteroskedasticity. ‘Yes’ means the corresponding variables are controlled in the regression, while ‘No’ means they are not controlled.

Moreover, it has been shown in the existing literature that there are disparities in Internet usage and interpersonal communication among individuals of different ages and educational backgrounds [ 34 , 47 , 61 ]. Therefore, we further examine the heterogeneities of the impacts of Internet usage in the different subgroups, with different demographic characteristics. Table 12 shows that the impacts of Internet usage on communications with family and friends are significantly positive for both younger and older respondents. However, their effect is greater on the younger group under the age of 35, which may be due to the fact that young people are more inclined to use new online applications and are more skilled in Internet use. Therefore, the positive effect of Internet usage is more prominent in the younger cohort. The mean time of Internet usage for young individuals under 35 in CGSS is 23.59, which is much greater than that of their older counterparts, which is 7.56.

Heterogeneity analysis, in terms of age.

The results of the heterogeneity analysis in terms of education level are shown in Table 13 . It is demonstrated that regardless of whether the respondents have a bachelor’s degree or above, the positive effect of Internet usage on interpersonal communications is significant. However, the Internet’s impact is more pronounced for those with higher educational levels. This may be due to the fact that the more educated groups have greater opportunities to learn and master the skills of using the Internet. In the CGSS sample, the average time of Internet usage among people with higher educational levels is much higher than the lower educated respondents (25.03 > 9.70).

Heterogeneity analysis, in terms of education level.

In addition, in terms of regional heterogeneity, it is clear from Table 14 that the impact of Internet usage on communications with family and friends is more prominent for urban residents. Compared with their rural counterparts, urban residents are more familiar with the Internet in their work and daily life, due to faster technological development and better network infrastructure. Therefore, the descriptive statistics for the two subsamples show that the mean hours of Internet usage for residents in rural and urban areas are 16.29 and 8.64, respectively.

Heterogeneity analysis in terms of region.

In addition, the Internet can help people to break geographical restrictions and realize remote communication, consequently shortening the distances between each other [ 19 ]. Therefore, it is natural to hypothesize that the role of Internet usage in facilitating communication may be more prominent for migrants. The regression results of Table 15 show that Internet usage has significant effects on promoting interpersonal communications, for both migrants and non-migrants. In particular, columns (1) and (2) show that in terms of family communication, the impact of Internet usage on migrants is more prominent than on non-migrants. However, columns (3) and (4) do not show a similar pattern in terms of communicating with friends. This is logical, since blood relationships among family members do not change due to migration, while friends can be found wherever you live. Migration leads to people moving further away from their families, geographically; consequently, the role of Internet usage in enhancing communications with family members is more prominent for migrants.

Heterogeneity analysis in terms of migration.

8. Conclusions

This paper empirically examines the impact of Internet usage on interpersonal communications with data from the Chinese General Social Survey to answer whether the Internet brings people closer together or further apart. The empirical results demonstrate that first, Internet usage helps to significantly increase the time and frequency of communications with family and friends, rather than causing people to feel more disconnected and isolated. This positive effect is robust when using various regression models and interpersonal contact measures, as well as the instrumental variable method. Specifically, the positive effects of Internet usage in promoting people’s interpersonal communications do not rely on the selection of regression models and are robustly significant regarding both the time that people spend on interactions, as well as the frequency of daily contacts. Furthermore, the relationship between Internet usage and interpersonal communications is proven to be causal rather than being a simple correlation, using the instrumental variable approach.

Second, Internet usage contributes to decreased loneliness, and it exerts this effect primarily by improving people’s interactions with their family members. However, communications with friends do not significantly mediate such impacts. This implies that the Internet reduces the feeling of loneliness by facilitating communication among family members, who are much more important in the Chinese culture, and therefore relationships among family members have a more important impact on personal feelings.

Third, the positive role of Internet usage on communications is more prominent for people with more frequent online socialization and self-presentation, higher online skills, younger age, higher educational levels and living in urban areas. In addition, the beneficial effects of Internet usage are larger on communications with family members for migrants. The reason may be that the blood relationships among family members do not change due to migration, while friends can be found anywhere.

9. Theoretical and Practical Implications

9.1. theoretical implications.

This paper clarifies the net effect of Internet usage on interpersonal communications. Research has shown that Internet technology has tremendously enriched communication channels and modes [ 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 87 , 89 ]. Moreover, compared with traditional communication methods, such as phone calls and text messages, the Internet helps people to establish a much wider social network and achieve effective remote communication at a lower cost, as well as with greater efficiency [ 69 , 70 , 90 , 101 ]. Nevertheless, other studies reveal that Internet usage may distract people’s attention [ 10 , 11 , 65 , 66 , 83 ], reduce their social skills [ 47 , 67 , 68 , 84 , 85 ], and may even increase negative emotions [ 10 , 11 , 53 , 73 , 86 ]. The impact of Internet usage in this aspect would hinder interpersonal communications. No direct evidence is provided on how the Internet influences interpersonal communications. Therefore, according to theoretical analyses based on the existing literature, the net effect of Internet usage on interpersonal contacts is still unclear because of the coexistence of the complementarity and interference aspects. This research contributes to the literature by clarifying that the net effect of Internet usage on interpersonal communications is positive. The more that people use the Internet, the more they can interact with their family and friends. This positive effect is confirmed via various endogeneity and robustness checks. This paper shows that although the Internet may have both pros and cons, its overall impact is positive regarding interpersonal communication.

In addition, this paper further verifies the role of the Internet in reducing people’s loneliness, which is an important factor affecting well-being. Loneliness not only leads to depression but also reduces people’s life satisfaction and overall well-being [ 102 , 103 ]. Interpersonal interaction is an important element impacting loneliness [ 104 ]. Since Internet usage promotes communication, a natural question arises regarding whether it helps to decrease loneliness through this mechanism. If this speculation holds true, the robustness of the conclusions in this paper would be confirmed further. The existing research demonstrates that the Internet has enriched interpersonal communication channels [ 105 ]. Moreover, other studies reveal that interactions can help reduce loneliness, improve people’s well-being, and decrease depression [ 89 , 91 , 106 ]. In this paper, we present our findings that Internet usage lowers loneliness by promoting people’s communications with family and friends. Therefore, this study also contributes to the literature by elucidating the mechanisms underlying the well-being and emotional benefits of Internet use [ 107 ].

Furthermore, compared with previous studies supporting the positive effects of Internet usage [ 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 87 , 89 ], we also find heterogeneities in its impact from multiple perspectives. It is clear that not everyone gains equally from Internet use. The positive role of the Internet on interpersonal communication is more prominent for people with more frequent online socialization and wider self-presentation, better online skills, a younger age, higher educational levels, and who are living in urban areas. Some subgroups benefit more from Internet usage, while those who have been left behind in the digital age gain less. Heterogeneity analysis enriches the literature on the impact of the Internet, helping us to better identify vulnerable groups in the Internet era and create effective public policies accordingly.

9.2. Practical Implications

With the rapid progress of online technology, traditional face-to-face communication is gradually shifting toward social networking via the Internet as people are becoming immersed in the digital age. The Internet not only drives economic development but also helps people to interact with each other at a lower cost and in a more convenient way. The policy implications of this paper include the following recommendations.

First, the network infrastructure should be improved and updated to make better use of the Internet, to facilitate interpersonal communication among people. In the fast-changing world of information, the Internet has provided people with more and more convenient communication channels. We should continue to make better use of more advanced Internet technologies and improve the quality of the network, in order to enhance people’s online experience. Emerging technologies, such as 5G, should be applied to help people obtain more convenient and cheaper access to the Internet to improve their interpersonal communication and enhance social welfare.

Second, this paper reports that the Internet promotes interpersonal contact, thereby weakening people’s sense of loneliness. Therefore, establishing high-quality online communities via social networks is needed to help people enhance their well-being through further interactions. For those who suffer from loneliness, providing them with better access to the Internet may be an effective way to enhance their welfare. From the perspective of mental health, loneliness is related to an increased risk of mental disorders, such as depression, anxiety, and even dementia. Therefore, it is worth recommending that sufferers use the Internet to enhance their communications with others. For people with communication difficulties, online interactions can help them overcome their fear and help them to get in touch with others, thus establishing better social networks [ 90 ].

Third, policymakers should pay more attention to vulnerable subgroups in the Internet age, including older people and those with poorer online skills, those who are less well-educated, and those living in rural areas. These groups gain fewer benefits from Internet usage. Therefore, it is important to help them master the necessary online skills and provide them with more convenient and less expensive access to the Internet. For example, the network coverage should be extended to more remote and rural areas and the Internet connectivity there needs to be improved so that as many people as possible have equal access to the Internet. In addition, with the rapid development of Internet technology, individuals with lower education levels and older age may not be able to update their Internet skills. This may mean that they are unable to gain the benefits of Internet usage in terms of interpersonal communication. Therefore, in the context of the rapid application of emerging online technologies, enhancing the Internet skills of these vulnerable subgroups should be emphasized.

10. Limitations

First, since CGSS data is based on subjective answers, both the explanatory and explained variables in this paper are subjective indicators and there may, thus, be measurement errors caused by subjectivity. Although different variables are used as dependent variables in the robustness checks, confirming the positive effect of Internet usage on interpersonal interactions, these measures are also subjective. Therefore, we look forward to further testing the relationship between Internet usage and interpersonal contacts based on objective indicators in the future.

Second, as CGSS does not provide detailed information concerning the amount of time that people spend on the Internet for various purposes, we are unable to examine the effects of different types of online activities on interpersonal communications. In this regard, if people use the Internet mainly for working or for entertainment, rather than for interpersonal contacts, then online activities may well have a different effect on their communications with family members and friends. In the heterogeneity analysis, this research divided the sample into subgroups with different degrees of online social interactions and different preferences for online self-presentation. The results show that the impacts of Internet usage on communication with family and friends are only significant among those who habitually use the Internet to socialize and post updates. This indirectly examines the impact of different types of Internet usage on communications. We look forward to further investigating this issue in the future, on the basis of more detailed online data.

Third, this paper examines the impact of Internet usage on interpersonal communications in general. However, it is still not clear how Internet usage affects people’s face-to-face interactions. Due to data limitations, we are unable to directly test the quality of offline personal relationships, for example, changes in conversational topics, the willingness to broach topics discussed on the Internet, and the inclination to reveal true thoughts in a face-to-face relationship. The effects of Internet use on the quality of offline communications will be a very valuable research direction in the future.

Funding Statement

This research was funded by the Humanities and Social Science Research Project of the Ministry of Education of China (grant number 19YJC790055); the Project of the Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number 71973081); the Project of the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province, China (grant number ZR2020QG038); the Project of the Social Science Foundation of Shandong Province, China (grant number 19DJJJ08), and the Project of Teaching Reform of Shandong University (grant number Y2022007).

Author Contributions

C.L. contributed to the conception and design of the study and performed the statistical analysis. Y.X. generated the tables and figures, respectively, based on C.L.’s analysis. C.L. wrote the first draft of the manuscript. G.N., K.G. and Q.L. worked on revisions of the manuscript. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Institutional Review Board Statement

Not applicable.

Informed Consent Statement

Data availability statement, conflicts of interest.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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Millions of Low-Income Families Set to Lose Internet Subsidies

The Affordable Connectivity Program, a $14.2 billion federal effort to make internet service more affordable, is expected to run out of funding this spring.

By Madeleine Ngo

Reporting from Washington

Phyllis Jackson, a retired administrative assistant in Monroeville, Pa., signed up for home internet service for the first time in about two decades early last year. She now regularly uses the internet to pay her bills online, buy clothes, find new recipes and learn about her medication.

Ms. Jackson said she signed up for internet service after enrolling in a federal program that provided a monthly discount for low-income households. That program is set to run out of funding this spring, however, which will make it harder for Ms. Jackson and millions of other households to afford to stay connected to the internet.

“I really can’t do without it,” said Ms. Jackson, 79. “The way things are today, everyone needs to be able to use the computer.”

The $14.2 billion Affordable Connectivity Program provides low-income households up to $30 off their internet bill each month, and households living on eligible tribal lands can receive a discount of up to $75 a month. More than 23 million households receive either reduced bills or effectively free internet service through the program.

But federal officials began winding down the program early last month, when they stopped accepting new applications and enrollments. The program was tucked into the 2021 infrastructure law as a replacement for a pandemic-era program that provided certain households discounts on their internet bills. Although there is some bipartisan support to continue the subsidies, lawmakers have not passed an extension.

Participants will continue receiving full benefits through April, according to the Federal Communications Commission. In May, internet companies will have the option to provide them with partial discounts using the remaining federal funding. Based on provider claims data as of Feb. 15, the program had about $2.5 billion left , which is meant to cover the subsidies and other program expenses.

The program is part of the Biden administration’s broader initiative to connect every American to affordable, high-speed internet, which officials hope will stimulate economic growth and widen access to health care and education. The administration is spending an additional $42.5 billion to expand access to broadband to every corner of the country.

The administration is funneling billions of dollars into the expansion of internet access largely because officials see it as a critical way to strengthen the economy. Across U.S. metros, prime-age workers who have access to high-speed internet on home computers participate in the labor force at a much higher rate than those without access, according to research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia . Other research has found that internet connectivity can bolster economic growth in rural areas , helping to create jobs and attract workers.

Some Democratic and Republican lawmakers have coalesced around a bill that would provide $7 billion to fund the program for about another year. Senator Peter Welch of Vermont, a Democrat who has sponsored the bill, said that he was encouraged by the bipartisan support, but that it was “tough to be optimistic.”

“It’s hard to get anything done in this Congress,” Mr. Welch said. “Anything on the budget becomes very contentious.”

In October, Biden administration officials sent Congress a supplemental request for $6 billion to extend funding for the program, which they have urged Republicans to support. “It’s past time for them to step up for the American people so that we can continue our work to close the digital divide across America,” Robyn Patterson, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement.

F.C.C. officials have said more funding is “urgently needed” to help millions of households stay connected to high-speed internet. According to a survey the F.C.C. conducted of program recipients in December, 48 percent of respondents said they would switch to a lower-cost plan that could be slower than their current one, and 29 percent said they would drop service after losing the benefit.

Paloma Perez, a spokeswoman for the F.C.C., said that the end of the program would be a “step backward” and that officials were working with lawmakers to “think about what the future of this program looks like.”

But some Republicans have argued that the program is wasteful. In a December letter to the F.C.C., Senator John Thune of South Dakota and other Republican lawmakers raised concerns about the program subsidizing households that already had internet service. They have also pointed to findings from the F.C.C.’s Office of Inspector General, which has in recent months expressed concerns about some providers failing to comply with program rules and improperly claiming funds.

“Some people are receiving this benefit that don’t really need it,” Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia said during a recent local news interview . “So I think we need to have accountability and make sure that the people that are receiving this benefit are the ones that actually cannot pay.”

According to the F.C.C. survey, 22 percent of respondents said they did not have any internet service and 25 percent only had mobile internet service before enrolling in the program. Thirty percent of respondents said they had both mobile and home internet service.

Blair Levin, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an F.C.C. official during the Obama administration, said that changes to the program would be problematic, but that lawmakers should reach a compromise before millions of Americans are left at risk of losing internet access.

Ms. Jackson, who enrolled in the program with assistance from a Pittsburgh-based nonprofit , said she was not sure if she could afford internet service after the program ends. She said she would most likely have to purchase fewer groceries and reduce her electricity use to cut expenses, but her monthly rent is also set to increase by $50 next month.

The end of the subsidy program could also complicate the Biden administration’s other $42.5 billion program to provide every American access to broadband, said Drew Garner, the director of policy engagement at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society. The funds, which will be distributed as grants to internet providers, are meant to cover much of the cost of building broadband infrastructure.

Without the subsidy program, however, more low-income households will struggle to afford broadband service. With fewer potential customers in low-income areas, internet providers will have less incentive to expand service in those neighborhoods and may ask for bigger federal grants, Mr. Garner said.

“It’s a big task to reach every unconnected household in the country,” Mr. Garner said. “That’s going to be way harder without the A.C.P. attracting infrastructure to those very hard-to-reach areas.”

Mr. Garner said the subsidy program has also helped provide households more stable internet access. In the year before enrolling in the program, many participants reported only having internet service during the months they could afford it. Although some households could drop service entirely, others might opt into slower internet plans, which could impede their ability to complete many tasks online, Mr. Garner said.

Vincent Coleman, a 26-year-old medical student in Huntington, W.Va., said he would probably have to downgrade his internet plan. Although the new plan would cost about $40 a month — roughly the same amount he pays now with the discount — he worries his internet connection would be too slow to watch lectures or view patient records at home.

Mr. Coleman said the benefit has helped provide relief for him and his wife.

“It’s a great help,” Mr. Coleman said. “Finances are always a major source of stress, and I budget very carefully.”

Madeleine Ngo covers U.S. economic policy and how it affects people across the country. More about Madeleine Ngo