(WITHDRAWN) Overcoming Digital Poverty and Inequality: A New Frontier for Social Work Practice

Background

Singapore is one of the most digitally connected countries in the world. Thus, when the Covid-19 pandemic led to lock downs, it came as a surprise that many low-income families were found to be without the digital resources for remote school and work.

Social workers, donors and government officials kicked into gear, working together to rush the required resources to digitally poor families through donations of refurbished and new laptops, dongles for internet access, and providing basic digital training. Ground up research also emerged to make sense of this new area of need that social services have suddenly been thrust upon. The first author gathered a group of academics, practitioners and donors, and from there started an ongoing research to piece together the required policy and programmatic responses for a need that up till then was considered a private good that was left to individual affordability.

This paper proposes steps towards universal digital access, based on insights collectively arrived at from the research done by the coalition of academics, social workers and donors, but also suggests challenges to universality from a public poll and a survey of young people.

Methodology

The primary research informing this presentation is a participatory action research that resulted from the abovementioned collective coming together to make sense of digital resourcing as social welfare. Data from the research included work group meetings, focus group discussions, WhatsApp messages and e-mails, interviews conducted with 20 households who received laptop donations, and a poll of 857 public respondents on digital access attitudes.

This is complemented by data from a survey of 1,389 young Singaporeans on in-work poverty, from questions on digital knowledge and access. This data provides a broader view of the extent of digital inequality, especially among young adults for whom technology adoption is often assumed.

All data was collected between 2020 and 2022.

Findings

Digital inequality was clear and persistent. Despite the tremendous community and governmental co-operation that put digital resources into homes during Covid-19, low income households possess poorer quantity and quality of devices and internet connectivity, leading to weakened and inconsistent ability to participate in a society that has gone digital in all of life, from training and education, to banking and government services. For instance, some of the donated laptops have quickly spoilt, and the households could not afford the repair costs.

The collective recommends universal digital access, suggesting ways for digital resources to be provided more automatically and affordably. Otherwise, digital poverty leads to income poverty in today’s digital world. However, the attainability of universality is challenged by two findings. On one hand, a substantial group of poll respondents prefer targeted means-tested support. On the other hand, the survey and interview results suggest that low income young people themselves do not see the need for digital resources, and are oblivious to technology potentially replacing their jobs.

Our presentation will flesh out the details of the above tensions, and discuss the important role of social work in this new contested frontier.