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Students in rural America still lack access to high-speed internet at home despite governmental efforts during the pandemic to fill the void. This lack of access negatively affects their academic achievement and overall well-being. The situation has been getting worse as the urgency of the pandemic has receded.

Those findings are based on a new study we did to determine the post-pandemic outlook on .

During the pandemic, school districts quickly deployed emergency resources such as Wi-Fi hot spots to facilitate remote learning. In rural Michigan, student home internet connectivity soared to 96% by the end of 2021, a remarkable from 2019.

However, these gains are proving temporary. By 2022, student access in rural Michigan began to decline. Today, many more students are disconnected . The downward trend is likely to continue as

We surveyed students in grades 8-11 from and , tracking changes in their digital access, educational outcomes and well-being. We found that of rural students still lack high-speed broadband internet at home.

Why it matters

highlights how rural gaps in access to the internet, mainly the lack of broadband home internet access, were not resolved over the pandemic. And these persistent access gaps could affect students’ , and .

Rural students lacking adequate home internet face significant educational disadvantages compared with their better-connected peers. These lower classroom grades, , lower educational aspirations and lower interest in STEM careers. Our findings link these adverse outcomes, which start with access gaps, to subsequent gaps in digital skills. These digital skills are less likely to develop without reliable broadband connectivity at home.

In early 2020, schools mobilized state and federal relief to provide students with home internet and laptops. Our study demonstrates the success of these initiatives in rural areas, where school-provided Wi-Fi hot spots accounted for nearly all of the during the pandemic’s peak. Importantly, as hot spot funding has ended, many households maintained access by subscribing to local internet service providers.

The success in transitioning students from school-provided Wi-Fi hot spots to paid subscriptions is now at risk. Many low-income households rely on the , the nation’s largest internet affordability initiative, created under the . This program provides a monthly discount of up to US$30 for eligible households and up to $75 for households on Native American tribal lands. The program is set to expire in .

We found that internet access among rural students had in 2022. This trend is likely to accelerate with the end of the Affordable Connectivity Program.

Young people’s time spent online – such as surfing the internet, playing video games and interacting on social media – helps them develop valuable skills. These skills include problem-solving, information literacy and creative expression. These skills apply across both digital and offline environments. Our research shows that digital skills helped rural students , even as these interests declined during the pandemic.

Additionally, rural adolescents are at a heightened level of risk for social isolation. While adolescent mental health within our study – as measured by – , rural students without adequate home internet remain at higher risk.

What still isn’t known

A major challenge in bridging the access divide is pinpointing underserved areas. Accurate maps are crucial to direct billions of dollars in funding from programs such as the , also known as BEAD, and the toward truly underserved communities. As part of the process to receive BEAD funding, each state must identify unserved and underserved homes. Local governments, nonprofit organizations and internet service providers can also develop .

Maps must be finalized and grants must be made to states before large-scale infrastructure improvements will commence. However, some other early initiatives are now coming online. For example, in 2022, the , in partnership with a , started the . Funded with a $10.5 million grant from the , this project increases the bandwidth on Michigan’s education network that is being made available to local service providers. These providers will deliver reliable high-speed internet to 17,000 previously unserved households by the end of 2024.

Still, other major infrastructure improvements across the country will .

The is a short take on interesting academic work.

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

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