as they face extraordinarily challenging odds.
Why the Home Broadband Internet Gap Matters
As the discussion above explains, several families in our study struggled to sustain access to home broadband Internet. The presence of broadband in the home is associated with a number of important outcomes related to young people’s participation in the digital world. During the period of our fieldwork, 73 percent of U.S. households adopted broadband Internet, according to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).13 Adoption varied along some predictable categories. For example, the lowest-family-income households (48 percent) were less likely to have access to home broadband than the highest-family-income households (95 percent). Similarly, white households (77 percent) were more likely than black (61 percent) or Latino (63 percent) households to have home broadband.14
About 28 percent of the 122 million households represented in the NTIA’s study did not use broadband at home. The NTIA identified several reasons why some households were nonadopters of broadband Internet. The main reason given for nonadoption was “don’t need it, not interested.” We saw no evidence of this viewpoint in our study. This is likely due to one main fact: the presence of school-aged children in all of the households in our fieldwork. A child in the home has long been a good predictor of whether technologies like computers, gaming platforms, or the Internet will be available in the home. As we noted above, all of the parents that we met understood the basic benefits of computers and the Internet.
The second reason cited by the NTIA—broadband is too expensive—was a common refrain among the households in our study that were nonadopters of broadband. Among the families in our study, economic difficulties were a constant barrier to the acquisition of nonessential household-related goods and services. Another reason cited by the NTIA—the presence of an inadequate computer—consistently appeared in our conversations with students. Many of the Freeway students in our study had home access to computers and mobile phones. However, as these devices aged, an upgrade to a new computer or phone was not a certainty. As we discuss in chapter two, for instance, students often had to make do with dilapidated mobile devices and household computers; thus, their home access to a more robust Internet experience was severely limited.
The broadband gap in the United States matters for several reasons. Students who have broadband access only at school or in public spaces like a library may not have sufficient time to tinker, play, or develop the repertoire of digital skills and social capital that are often associated with more dynamic digital media practices. Additionally, young people who lack access to high-capacity digital networks are more likely to be only consumers rather than producers of digital media content. Home broadband users are much more likely than nonusers to create and share content, two key features in the participatory cultures that are a significant aspect of the networked world. This has implications for the quality of young people’s engagement with media as well as their prospects for cultivating more advanced thinking and digital making skills.
The absence of home broadband has serious educational implications too. Students who do not have reliable access to broadband Internet face serious limitations in their academic endeavors and preparation for a knowledge economy. Whether it is in school or out of school, we live in a world that takes for granted the ability to collaborate with others, work with networked documents, and use mobile and cloud-based platforms.
Living in homes and attending schools that are short on financial and technological resources requires one to be creative and flexible. Freeway students were constantly adapting their Internet use to changing or uncertain circumstances—a lost or broken mobile device, social media filters at school, or no Internet connection at home. Students who did not have Internet access at home or via their own mobile device mined other options, including computers at school, public Wi-Fi, and the devices of friends. This last method—relying on devices from friends—was especially interesting and reflects the creation of what we call an informal sharing economy.
The student-powered “sharing economy” that we detected was marked by a series of practices that involved trading, co-owning, and partnering with peers to use handheld mobile devices like smartphones and iPods. The swapping and sharing of mobile handhelds created a distinct community of trust while also providing access to the media content coveted by many teens. The decision to share devices and passwords embodies the resilience that characterizes how students navigated the daily realities of life in the digital edge. We discuss this informal sharing economy in greater detail in chapter two.
Further, students became experts at finding Wi-Fi hotspots when they could not afford mobile data plans. Some students even acknowledged that they figured out ways to use neighboring Wi-Fi connections even when they were not open to the public. A few students turned the computers at Freeway into their personal platform during the after-school hours. And others leveraged good relations with teachers to earn weekend borrowing privileges that allowed them to use laptops and digital editing software at home. In other words, even when access to a robust Internet experience or opportunity to produce digital media seemed unlikely as a result of social and economic barriers, students designed their own social hack to pursue their interests and creative aspirations in the digital world.
A Case Study of Creative Resilience: Miguel and Marcus
Miguel and Marcus, twins who lived in a trailer park community with their immigrant parents, are excellent examples of the tenacity many students displayed to ensure their meaningful participation in the digital world. All of our interactions and conversations with the twin brothers and their parents strongly suggest that the family were undocumented Mexican immigrants. Like many of the students from immigrant households, Miguel and Marcus began their schooling in the United States in an English language learner class. They mastered that curriculum relatively early in their academic career and transitioned seamlessly to an English-language curriculum. The twins were in the ninth grade, well adjusted, and enrolled in two pre-AP classes when we met them.
The media practices of the twins took shape in a home environment that offered a modicum of access to the social and gaming media they coveted. There was a computer and two televisions in the home. The computer was a PC that was shared among four siblings and two adults. Moreover, the PC was an aging machine with a temperamental graphics card, which made it unsuitable for the gaming adventures and social media that the twins enjoyed. The Internet connection was not broadband but it was functional. No one in the household owned a smartphone. Miguel, however, did own a Nintendo DS—a handheld gaming platform that was steadily losing market share to the Apple products during our fieldwork.
In the cramped bedroom that the twins shared was a Wii game console and television set. The Wii, according to Miguel, was hooked up to an old television. “It’s a small old TV like the one that releases all that static,” he said during one of our many interviews with him. Due to the PC’s limited performance capacity, the twins opted to use their Wii gaming console whenever they logged into Facebook at home.
Occasionally, Miguel used his DS to connect with peers. “The DS has a browser and you can connect to Facebook Mobile,” he explained. He used the social network to “personal message” friends, but it was a much slower form of communication. “Most people have phones and they text each other,” Miguel said. When asked what else he did with the DS, Miguel said, “I can put music on it. There are programs and games. There is a notebook thing that I can write down memos and meetings.” He also had a few games on the device. Miguel expressed frustration that the DS could not connect to the Wi-Fi at school. He noted that Apple products like the iPhone and iPod connected with no problems.
In addition to connecting with his peers from school on Facebook, Miguel used the social network to connect with people he had met through Perfect World, a popular multiplayer online role-playing game. Perfect World is a 3D adventure and fantasy virtual world based on Chinese mythology. As with World of Warcraft, it took the commitment of seemingly endless hours to develop both the technical proficiency and the social currency necessary to build a more compelling experience in Perfect World. He played every night for two hours when he arrived home from school. He acknowledged that he would have played much longer, but “my parents