Internet-Deprived Kids Turning To 'McLibraries'

theodp writes "After the school computer lab and public library close for the night in many communities, the local McDonald's is often the only place to turn for students without internet access at home. 'Cheap smartphones and tablets have put Web-ready technology into more hands than ever,' reports the WSJ's Anton Troianovski. 'But the price of Internet connectivity hasn't come down nearly as quickly. And in many rural areas, high-speed Internet through traditional phone lines simply isn't available at any price. The result is a divide between families that have broadband constantly available on their home computers and phones, and those that have to plan their days around visits to free sources of Internet access.' The FCC says it can make broadband available to all Americans by spending $45 billion over 10 years, but until then the U.S. will have to rely on Mickey D's, Starbucks, and others to help address its digital divide. Time to update that iconic McDonald's sign?"

Comments

Title translation

[c0lo]

Deprivation of Internet - a common cause of picking bad eating habits at low ages for Homo sapiens.

Wow

[Jmc23]

I rtfa and am quite suprised by what passes for 'poor'. Seems more like people who don't know how to budget and set priorities. Judging by the amount of debt the US has, sounds like par for the course.

Re:Wow

[Jmc23]

Well, lot's of poor homeless people have no trouble collecting a dollar to buy a burger. This isn't the ritz you know.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

I have seen a fair bit of homeless people that have a decent($500 or less) laptop. Could they afford the $800 a month for an apartment no. I don't think you understand how becoming poor works.

Re:Wow

[sqrt(2)]

You might want to reassess your definition of poverty then. Cooking food yourself doesn't just involve purchasing ingredients. There is a substantial upfront cost of buying the equipment and infrastructure to turn ingredients into food. At the very least you'll need to heat water and have a surface that can be sterilized and used to cook on. You'll need utensils and pots/pans. The energy required will be either gas or electric which costs money. I suppose you could burn wood but that isn't free either and is illegal/impractical most places.

So that $1 burger costs quite a bit more to cook yourself. If you have no equipment and no access to infrastructure then it's actually cheaper to buy fast food. The "total cost of ownership" of the food you make yourself is deceptive because much of the cost isn't directly related to the superficially cheaper ingredients.

We haven't even touched on the subject of cheap food being almost universally less healthy--even if it provides enough caloric content. Then there are food deserts where healthy food isn't even an option.

And for the "web enabled device" disqualifying you as poor remark; things really have changed that much. It happened so quickly that the older generation who can remember a time before the internet, or before computers, or before cell phones, thinks that owning or accessing those devices is a marker for the middle class and up. It's not anymore. Even the poorest citizens routinely use cellphones. Moreover, they NEED access to those devices/services just to be productive and make any money at all. Access to the internet or at least POTS is so vital that our government (rightly so) has partnered with industry players to make sure free cell phones are available to those who need them.

If you don't have access to a phone, and now the internet, you are effectively barred from participating in the economy. We can't survive that. We can't function if those people are completely dependent on government services to survive. It actually works out better, is less costly, to give away cellphones and internet access so those people can provide for themselves at least more than they were before. The alternative to not providing those things is paying for someone's entire existence, or if you refuse that, paying to lock them up when they inevitably turn to crime just to remain alive.

Re:Wow

[sqrt(2)]

You also have to pay for a place to store those things (flat, house, or something), and pay to have energy delivered to that dwelling to run those appliances. You'll also need transportation to and from a grocery store which could be substantially farther away than McDonald's. You're in grinding poverty, remember, so no car. It'll also take you much longer to shop that way, even before you get to start making food. Upfront costs instantly make the "cheaper" solution a non-starter for many people trapped in poverty.

I can leave you with the same idea expressed more colorfully by Terry Pratchett, from Men at Arms,

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socio-economic unfairness.

Re:Wow

[Baloo Uriza]

Thank you for explaining why McDonald's is not only popular, but thriving, in the American midwest. I was surprised to discover that, unless you live in a big city like McAlester, Claremore or Lawton, indoor plumbing is still a "maybe." Want basic landline phone service? That's a very real maybe. Want electricity? That's almost definitely a solar panels on your roof thing. Want indoor plumbing? Then you're stuck on a water cistern or a well, both of which depend on electricity. Whether you go well or cistern largely depends on whether or not fracking has destroyed the water table yet. And if you're on a cistern in rural Oklahoma two years into a drought, well, a shower is a five gallon bucket of water heated with a bucket heater, once a week, and you're happy to have the luxury of water to spare for bathing at all. (No, your coworkers and clients don't complain, they're in the same boat).

Re:Wow

[JackSpratts]

as a politician in a small northeastern city yours is i think the best reason for strongly supporting our public libraries in two critical areas; keeping the hours of operation as liberal as possible, especially during what may be generally difficult financial times, and keeping the facilities technologically up to date. your story is a reason to continue doing so, a primer on the results and, really, an inspiration.

- js.

Re:Libraries

[ndogg]

Sorry, liberals don't like it when the churches do things like "donating free space" to help people. They throw hissy fits, and start screaming about a separation of church and state. Well at least they do in the US, never mind that in Canada that churches and synagogues have been doing this up here for the better part of a decade already and it's open to the public.

We only care when government money is used to maintain such services, or are the only places for those public services to be available.

How comfortable would you be if the only place in your town that had free internet was a mosque?

Re:We should do it

[sqrt(2)]

They're not doing it for free, they operate a very profitable business selling food-like substances to people who are poor either in money or time. They've found that offering "free" wifi generates more additional revenue than the cost of operating the wifi--which they were probably doing anyway so that the store could have an internet connection.

Re:Internet is need, not a want.

[zAPPzAPP]

No, you will not.
Not as an active part of society at least. As involuntarily and essential services like paying your taxes, registering business, all kinds of insurances move to online only, you just can not participate in the economy anymore without internet access.

Sure, go live in the forrests dependant on no one else. There you won't need internet. But these rights are not made for hermits, they are made for citizens.

Moron

[SmallFurryCreature]

So, you need 650 dollars up front in your simplistic example. Gas/electricity of course just arrives for free and has no upfront costs in your silly world of moronic idiots who don't know what they are talking about.

Being poor is about not HAVING any money to spend. A classic example is the washing machine. Going to a laundromat is far more expensive AND time consuming but until you can afford the upfront cost of a washing machine, you have little choice but to try to save up for one while spending the higher amount of laundromat. Say you got a budget of 10 dollars for laundry per week. The laundromat costs 9.50, using your own washing machine costs 500 up front and 5 dollars per wash.

The person who doesn't have 500 dollars, has to use the laundromat and can only save up 50 cents per week. To save up the 500 dollars needed to buy a washing machine, takes years.

That is assuming said person even lives somewhere where it is possible/allowed to run a washing machine. A moron like Solandri will no doubt suggest to not wash your clothes and save up for 50 weeks those 10 dollars and then buy a washing machine. No doubt as the spoiled little rich white kid he will just say to get your mom to do it. He did. But if you do not wash your clothes for a year, you will go through clothes a LOT faster and most likely loose whatever job you have.

It is well known that the richer you are, the cheaper you can life. Even Terry Pratchett wrote about it with Sam Vimes Boots theory of economic injustice. It goes something like this: If you can afford 100 dollars for a pair of boots, you will have a pair of boots that will keep your feet dry for your life and can pass on to your children. If you can only afford a 10 dollar pair, they will leak with in six months and begone in a year. So the poor man spends more on boots then the rich men but still has wet feet. And no, you can't go for 10 years without boots to save up for a good pair.

What morons like Solandri fail to understand is that being poor means you don't have money. You would think this is fairly easy to understand concept but people like Solandri are really dumb indeed, they think poor people just want to be poor and could just get the money somewhere by magic if only they tried.

You can see how stupid Solandri is by not including the fixed costs of utility services, they charge a flat fee on top of which you pay for actual usage. He is a classic spoiled little rich kid who moans about the poor but doesn't know the price of milk.

Re:OH I see

[Larryish]

USA-ian here.

I was over at some friends' house (2 lesbian black women) a few years ago, and they had an other visitor.

Their visitor was complaining about money.

Said person was obese, with professionally done (read: gaudy) fingernails and a ridiculous-looking huge multicolored weave. She carried a Coach bag and a smartphone.

Her 2 kids were in clothing that looked like hand-me-downs from the Boys and Girls Club.

Neither she nor they spoke what could be considered proper English.

When she left, I asked my two friends about her. Unsurprisingly, she was on welfare.

Then I asked why she had all that gaudy-looking crap if she needed money.

Their reply was that she had to have that stuff to make herself feel good. They actually both seemed confused by the question.

Stupidity is its own reward.

I feel pity for the kids.

"ABCD-EBT Little Wayne just wants what's best for me."

Now go ahead and mod me down.