COVID-19 and digital inequalities: Reciprocal impacts and mitigation strategies

By E. Beaunoyer, S. Dupéré, Matthieu J. Guitton. Computers in Human Behavior, 2020

930 citations recorded by the source corpus.

With more than three billion people in isolation, the status of digital spaces is switching from an amenity to a necessity, as they become not only the main way to access information and services, but also one of the only remaining vectors for economic, educational, and leisure activities as well as for social interactions to take place. However, not all are equals in terms of access to networks or connected devices, or when it comes to the skills required to navigate computerized spaces optimally. Digital inequalities were already existing, yet the COVID-19 crisis is exacerbating them dramatically. On the one hand, the crisis will worsen digital inequalities within the population. On the other hand, digital inequalities represent a major risk factor of vulnerability for exposure to the virus itself, and for the non-sanitary consequences of the crisis. Therefore, this paper aims at exploring the reciprocal impacts of the COVID-19 crisis and digital inequalities, and to propose operative solutions to help fight the nefarious consequences of the crisis. We first describe how digital inequalities are a determinant of health. We then investigate how COVID-19 can potentiate digital inequalities, and how digital inequalities potentiate vulnerability to COVID-19. Finally, in order to contribute to the mitigation of this crisis, we propose a set of multi-layered strategies focusing on actionability that can be implemented at multiple structural levels, ranging from governmental to corporate and community levels.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Communication, Media Technology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1d18702ce32e598ce84f185eaa19fa3f8b229250

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Citations in the corpus

Revisiting the Digital Divide in the COVID‐19 Era (2020, background): “Home Internet connections with lower bandwidth are simply not able to support the multitasking demands of a household equipped with many technological devices (Beaunoyer, Dupéré, and Guitton 2020).”
Exploring customers' responses to online service failure and recovery strategies during Covid‐19 pandemic: An actor–network theory perspective (2021, background): “…impact of the Covid‐19 pandemic on consumer buying behavior, and have identified the social barriers that have an impact on their everyday life, particularly digital forces (Bacq et al., 2020; BBC, 2020a; Beaunoyer et al., 2020; Blackburn et al., 2020; Seetharaman, 2020; Shah, 2020; Sheth, 2020).”
COVID-19 and digitalization: The great acceleration (2021, background): “Typified by devastating impacts on livelihoods and business performance, the COVID-19 pandemic also highlights the vast digital divide between the poor and rich, between rural and urban areas, and between advanced and developing economies (Beaunoyer, Dupéré, & Guitton, 2020).”
E-Learning vs. Face-To-Face Learning: Analyzing Students’ Preferences and Behaviors (2021, background): “Limiting social interaction produces and maintains negative emotions, reducing well-being at large [4,18].”