Our Digital Divide

I wrote this article next to the river during my free periods and lunch break, fumbling to catch a faint signal from my phone’s hotspot. Instead of finishing my DeltaMath homework in the much warmer, cleaner, and less blindingly bright hallways of Stuyvesant, I braved pigeon attacks and winds that threatened to blow away my papers. When I do manage to sit inside, I hide my Kindle behind a class book to read something that isn’t school-related. 

Unfortunately, this isn’t a unique experience. Between Governor Hochul’s ban on internet-enabled devices and a general sociopolitical ideal that kids having devices is a net-negative sweeping across this country, many students are trapped in a world where we are hindered by our predecessors, who did not grow up with the same type of technology. The hypocrisy—these adults insisting that it’s the devices themselves that are the problem, yet constantly putting us in a position to use them—has leaked into every aspect of our now day-to-day life is ridiculous; there is such a divide between what we are told to do and what we can realistically accomplish.

We are told not to go on our phones, that they harm us, that they will destroy our minds and cause addiction. This would mean that simply taking away the phones is the solution. However, the real issue at hand is that students are not being taught how to manage their time or their phone usage. A phone—or any internet-enabled device—is just a piece of technology whose users need to be taught. Instead, kids are being taught to pretend they don’t need their phones, that they aren’t isolated when they don’t have access to social media, or that they don’t care about anything else other than the phone.  

A clear example of this tug-of-war between proclaimed avoidance and reality would be the prevalence of Google Classroom and the usage of online learning tools. The pandemic forced education systems—especially those in cities with thousands of kids—to relearn how to teach, effectively thrusting everyone onto websites they had never used before. But now—even in a post-pandemic society, where we’re supposedly trying to return to previous test scores and reading levels—Google Classroom is still used. Homework is still primarily assigned and completed virtually, with platforms such as VHL and EdPuzzle being employed by teachers across Stuyvesant. Both students and teachers are trying to meet past educational standards and practices using modern technology, a dichotomous combination that just does not mix. Even worse, we are forced to learn digitally while being unable to access these tools within school.

Two ways to view the negative impacts of this divide would be educational and occupational. The first category is apparent: looking at test scores, attendance patterns, and graduation rates. Chronic absenteeism, for example, increased significantly during the pandemic and hasn’t returned to previous levels: a report from the American Enterprise Institute details how, in 2017 (when most states began tracking data due to the implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA), absenteeism was around 13 percent, and it rose to nearly 30 percent by 2022. As of spring 2024, that number is around the 24 percent mark, indicating a lack of improvement. This is just one piece of the puzzle, but given how much chronic absenteeism can affect students’ academic journeys, it’s not an insignificant one. School doesn’t seem to be a priority for a lot of people now. Frankly, I understand why. Even though there are elements of going to school and learning that I find truly invigorating, there are many times when it all feels pointless—especially since I can find people all over the internet making money who didn’t graduate. Sometimes I wonder why I have to do all my homework; why do I have to care about all of my test scores, my projects, my eventual college application, if others can seemingly “slack off” and be just fine?

This leads directly to the second category: a fear dependent on our lack of useful technological understanding, the ever-changing economic status, and the rise of artificial intelligence. All of these factors mean that the job market is not necessarily shrinking but dramatically changing to an unpredictable degree at a pace that is not reflected in the current curriculum. Success is no longer determined merely by intelligence and hard work; some skills need to be learned but aren’t accessible to a lot of students. The increase of AI is especially critical when it comes to this because it’s decreasing the need for lower entry positions. As reported by John Sviokla at Forbes, a study conducted by Stanford University found that employment in entry-level positions for workers in their twenties has been highly stagnant since 2022, primarily because most of these jobs can be automated by AI. An employer doesn’t need a young associate to process data when AI can work faster and cheaper, another highlighted concern. For this reason, employers are not looking at fresh, inexperienced graduates for higher positions, and those they do take on need to have a higher degree of technical skill than previously. However, many students aren’t given opportunities to learn these skills. The Computer Science Teachers Association explains in its 2024 report how, while the majority of states in the US have some foundational computer science programs for high school students, there are significant disparities in the racial and socioeconomic makeup of the participants. Such disparities then move into the marketplace, only exacerbating gaps already there. 

This isn’t a “Gen Z” work ethic problem; it’s an educational one, but young students are constantly told otherwise. I, myself, find that I don’t know how much I’m supposed to learn. I’ve never found technology particularly interesting, but I also want to have success in the market when I’m older. Then, I think the solution is to take courses myself and learn all the programming languages I can think of, until I find that I’m apparently so far behind that it doesn’t even feel worth it to start—an incredibly discouraging cycle. Skills are mastered over time. You need to practice an instrument to play well; you have to train to play a sport better; and you need to have begun any of these endeavors at a very young age for it to actually matter in the long run. Success now, because it appears to be getting more and more dependent on your ability to perform a specific type of skill, is so tied to the amount of time spent that it feels impossible to get back the hours you needed, and that you’re never going to make it. 

Logically, though, the best way to handle this problem is to just start, regardless of how hard it can be. I am not going to be able to make up the hours, but I can at least start tracking them now. And for that very reason, I want schools to realize that no one can change how society works as a whole, but we can adapt so students can succeed. I really don’t want to wake up one day after college, thinking that I would’ve gotten that job I applied to, that I could’ve accomplished some major goal, if only I had been taught to know what I needed in the first place. Honestly, it feels a lot like the pandemic. No one can “solve” what we went through, the years and experiences that we lost. That cannot be “made up” to us, and so we have to somehow work up the courage to move on. Adults who did not grow up in a society like our own should not be making decisions on what we can and cannot handle in a subject that, frankly, they don’t understand. I wonder, do we want to create a world that consistently lives in what they believe is the past, while the rest of the world moves on? If not, we should move in the modern direction and prepare students for it. This means more technology-based classes in all schools with high-value funding and taking advantage of online AI detectors so we can learn how to write without in-class essays, and realizing that ignoring the problem is only going to create a larger one that has to be faced by the next graduating class. 

Have you ever heard of the concept that overly strict parents create overly sneaky children? That’s what’s happening with technology now, when you take away our phones. I want to be taught responsibility, not that I’m a bad person for checking the text my friend sent me. If anything, I’ve been on my phone more since the ban took place because I can’t check it briefly. Any moment I get to check my phone is one to take advantage of, which results in a doom scroll on the subway home that could’ve been prevented if I could’ve checked those texts right after third period. If someone is on their phone too much, then they’ll face the consequences when they fail a test or don’t sleep enough. It’s not one student’s fault, but telling students that we cannot handle a device—a device that is, frankly, too prevalent in our society to truly let go—means we won’t be able to. We’ll either hide it from you, or we’ll take ourselves out of social life when we need it the most. There’s also this seeming inability for adults to follow their own standards. Phones are banned in schools, but our teachers still frequently go on them in the middle of class. How can we be expected to fall in line with these guidelines while the very people giving them to us aren’t?

Social constructs, school systems, political parties—whatever you want to blame—need to decide which direction we’re going to move in and commit because, right now, we’re at an impasse that will simply not be crossed until there is some consensus. Either commit fully to this lack of technology, teachers and students alike, or realize that the issue they’re trying to solve isn’t fixed by creating more. Right now, we’re not teaching kids how to be good people on and off their devices. We’re teaching them that they have to appear that nothing is wrong and to hide their necessities in the shadows. We’re teaching them to be perfect, and that’s not the same thing. It may be just a phone ban now, but the impacts may become too drastic to ignore. Even worse, by then, it will be too late to care.