Picture two people who both need the same thing: help paying a utility bill this month. One sits down at a laptop, searches "utility assistance near me," fills out an online form in ten minutes, and hears back by email. The other doesn't have home internet, can't take time off work to visit an office in person, and doesn't know the assistance program exists at all. Same need. Wildly different odds of getting help.

That gap is at the center of a question we think about constantly on the Data & Growth Team: can technology actually reduce the barriers standing between people and the support they need, or does it just create new barriers for a different group of people? The honest answer is both. Done well, digital tools can make services faster, cheaper to deliver, and easier to find. Done without care, they can quietly lock out the very people who need help most.

Photo by Ron Lach from Pexels

It's tempting to think the digital divide is a solved problem. It isn't. It's just changed shape. Nationally, the offline population has fallen sharply over the past decade, from roughly 27 million households in 2015 to under 8 million in 2024, and internet access now reaches nearly 94% of U.S. households.

But averages hide the gap. Households earning under $30,000 a year subscribe to home broadband at roughly 54–57%, compared with about 94–95% of households earning six figures—a 40-point gap that has barely moved in years. Cost, not availability, is now the primary obstacle for many of these households, especially since a major federal subsidy that helped offset monthly internet bills expired in 2024.

For the people this affects most, the gap doesn't stop at internet access. Researchers describe digital exclusion as four separate barriers stacked on top of each other: whether infrastructure exists at all, whether the connection is fast enough to be usable, and whether language, cultural fit, or comfort with technology gets in the way even when the service works fine. A tool can clear the first hurdle and still fail someone at the third.

The flip side is real, too. Well-designed digital tools have measurably closed gaps between people and services that used to depend entirely on an in-person visit or a phone call during business hours.

Online screening tools that let someone check their eligibility for benefits like food assistance or Medicaid before ever speaking to a caseworker have existed for over a decade, run by state agencies and nonprofits alike. During the COVID-19 pandemic, telehealth became a lifeline for exactly this reason: it removed the need to travel, arrange child care, or take unpaid time off just to see a provider. National data shows telehealth use among American adults jumped sharply during that period specifically because it eliminated those logistical barriers.

More recent efforts go a step further by meeting people where they already are. Digital service navigators—trained guides who help someone find and apply for the right resource—pair a human relationship with a digital tool, rather than asking people to figure out a website alone. Community-facing directories now list tens of thousands of local social services searchable by ZIP code, turning what used to require insider knowledge of "who to call" into something anyone can look up in a browser.

The throughline in all of these examples: the technology didn't replace the human process, it removed the friction around it—the driving, the waiting, the not-knowing-who-to-ask.

Here's the part that matters most for how we build things at Giving Connection: a tool can be live, functional, and full of useful resources and still fail the person it was built for.

Research on digital service-navigation programs has found something important: these tools tend to work best for families facing lower levels of hardship, and are least effective for the families facing the most complex, layered needs—the exact people the tool was meant to reach. Socioeconomic status, language, digital literacy, and even a parent's own capacity in a stressful moment all shape whether someone can successfully use a digital tool, independent of whether the tool itself is "good."

That's not an argument against building digital tools. It's an argument for building them differently:

1. Design for the lowest-bandwidth, most stressed-out version of your user: someone on an older phone, on a spotty connection, filling out a form on a lunch break.
2. Never make the digital version the only version. A phone number or a person who can walk someone through the process by hand isn't a fallback, it's part of the design.
3. Simplify before you digitize. Moving a confusing, jargon-heavy process onto a screen just makes it a confusing, jargon-heavy website.
4. Measure who isn't showing up, not just who is. A tool that only reaches people who are already going to find help isn't reducing barriers, it's serving the people with the fewest barriers to begin with.

Photo by Kampus Production from Pexels

Technology alone doesn't reduce barriers to getting help—thoughtful technology does. The difference between a tool that widens access and one that quietly narrows it comes down to design choices most users never see: Does it work on a five-year-old phone? Is there a human being on the other end when someone gets stuck? Was it built with the input of the people who'll actually rely on it, or just for them?

At Giving Connection, that's the standard we're trying to hold ourselves to. We aren’t just asking "is this online," but "who does this actually reach, and who is it still leaving out?"

We'd love to hear from you: what's a moment when technology made it easier, or harder, for you or someone you know to get help? Reach out or share your story with our team.

1.  Pew Research Center. "What we know about internet use, smartphone ownership and digital divides in the U.S." Pew Research Center, 2026. pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/01/08/internet-use-smartphone-ownership-digital-divides-in-u-s/ 

2.  Pew Research Center. "Internet, Broadband Fact Sheet" Pew Research Center, 2025. pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/internet-broadband/ 

3.  The Pew Charitable Trusts. "Together, Broadband Deployment and Digital Inclusion Programs Support Increased Internet Adoption." 2025. www.pew.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2025/01/28/together-broadband-deployment-and-digital-inclusion-programs-support-increased-internet-adoption 

4.  Reviews.org. "The U.S. Digital Divide Is Shrinking, But Nearly 8 Million Households Remain Offline." 2026.
reviews.org/internet-service/how-many-us-households-are-without-internet-connection/ 

5.  Hollimon, W. et al. "Redefining and solving the digital divide and exclusion to improve healthcare: going beyond access to include availability, adequacy, acceptability, and affordability." PMC, 2025. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12052546/ 

6.  Gilkes, B. et al. "Reducing the Digital Divide: Distribution of Technology to Increase Access to Pediatric Specialty Care via Telehealth During the COVID-19 Pandemic" Telemedicine Reports, 2025. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11947651/ 

7.  National Digital Inclusion Alliance. "Digital Navigator Model." digitalinclusion.org/digitalnavigatormodel/ 

8.  AAFP EveryONE Project. "Neighborhood Navigator." aafp.org/family-physician/patient-care/the-everyone-project/neighborhood-navigator.html 

9.  "Identifying subgroups with differential levels of service response to a digital screening and service navigation program for unmet social care needs." medRxiv, 2025. medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.07.25335288 

10.  U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, ASPE. "Web-Based Benefit Access Tools: Mitigating Barriers for Special Needs Populations" aspe.hhs.gov/reports/web-based-benefit-access-tools-mitigating-barriers-special-needs-populations-0