A Study on the Social Damage from Individual Mobile Digital Divide

Abstract

With the advent of smartphones, both quantitative and qualitative aspects of information exchanged by people have improved significantly. However, various types of digital divides are still emerging. The digital divide occurs in various forms according to educational background, age, occupation, and region. However, there is a lack of research on the digital divide in the wireless network environment and the calculation of the social damage from the viewpoint individual perception. Therefore, this study examines the mobile digital divide at the individual level and examines the social cost to solve it. In this paper, we focus on the types of social damage according to mobile digital divides in terms of work (education) and economic activities, social participation activities (politics, economy, issues), cultural life and consumption activities, family related problems and medical services. Unlike previous researches, it is expected that it will be possible to suggest a new direction to the establishment of the government policy to solve the digital divide by identifying social damage types according to the mobile digital divide at the individual level