Smartphones bridged the digital divide for China’s urban and rural children, but 5G and IoT devices are widening the gap again
- China’s rural residents under 18 years old are less likely to have used smartwatches, voice assistants and computers to get online, new study says
- Chinese children are experiencing the internet at an earlier age than ever
Surfing the internet used to be simple: we got online using either a computer or smartphone. But the arrival of smartwatches, smart speakers and countless other new gadgets in the Internet of Things has made users more connected than ever. And now that is threatening to widen the digital divide between China’s children in urban and rural areas.
“With the widespread availability of low-cost mobile phones and data plans, the disparity in internet access between urban and rural areas has almost been eliminated,” they wrote.
“But this doesn’t mean there is no difference between internet use among minors in urban and rural areas. In the future, the difference will gradually transition from ‘whether they can use it’ to ‘how they use it’.”
Compared with their rural counterparts, the urban children surveyed were more likely to have used computers, smartwatches and voice assistants. The difference ranges from 4.2 to 8.7 percentage points.
The gap is widest for tablets: more than a third of urban children have used them compared with less than a quarter of rural children.
