Digital divide & kids: Fresh look

According to the latest figures available, in the 2003-04 school year, 61% of US 8-to-18-year-olds used the Internet daily, 74% had access at home, and 96% had gone online (experienced the Net at least once). Those figures are from a just-released Kaiser Family Foundation study, "Digital Divide...Where to Go From Here," urging policymakers to refocus on this issue. The 96% figure, encouragingly, showed "no significant differences according to race, parent education, or median income of the community in which the children went to school," the report says, but that's not the most revealing figure where the digital divide's concerned. It's the figures for "have Net access at home" and "use the Net on a typical day" that show us how well we're closing the gap, and the study shows we still have work to do.