2. Special report: The 4 new digital divides

The internet has become a fundamental requirement of modern life. For those with comfortable incomes, living in cities or suburbs, connectivity and information can seem ubiquitous.

Reality check: According to a 2017 report from the Brookings Institution, less than one fifth of Americans live in a neighborhood where at least 80% of the residents have broadband.

• Nearly one-in-five teens are sometimes unable to complete homework because of lack of a reliable computer or internet connection.
• Local news and information is becoming scarce and hard to access. More than 500 newspapers have closed or merged in rural communities since 2004.

What's happening: This situation is the result of two types of “digital divide” operating today:

• A geographic divide —in which rural and other areas are underserved because it doesn’t make financial sense for companies to invest in infrastructure.
• An economic divide — where infrastructure is in place, but lower-income families lack affordable access and devices.

These divides are colliding and combining in troubling ways — creating a whole spectrum of education, information, and privacy inequality.

Go deeper:

• Privacy: You pay Google with data, Apple with cash
• The "homework gap": 12 million schoolchildren lack internet
• New inequality trend: How parents approach screen time
• Where the death of local news hits hardest
• The bottom line: Wealth is driving how people get the internet
• What the government is doing on internet access
• Electricity 2.0: Small cities rush to innovate on wifi
• The high price of free Facebook in the Philippines
• What's next: How the online world reflects inequality