Paying for parking, applying for jobs, communicating with your kids’ teachers — many daily tasks now require internet access. For someone who doesn’t know how to use a computer or smartphone, these can be a challenge.
Digital literacy is an issue in Weber County, said Silvia Castro, president and CEO of Suazo Business Center, a nonprofit that supports small business owners. She noticed a gap when the center offered an in-person kitchen management course that required students to take a certification test online.
The cohort in Ogden “did not know how to take the test online,” she said. So in addition to the course content, the center ended up teaching students the skills they needed for an electronic test.
“It's a certification that can bump up your salary,” she said. “It’s a certification that a lot of restaurants need to have a kitchen manager.”
That’s why Castro sees digital literacy as an aspect of economic development.
“You cannot move a person up that economic ladder if they have zero to low digital literacy skills. It’s just so much harder now.”
Immigrants and people who don’t speak English are less likely to be technologically literate, according to the Migration Policy Institute. As of 2022, more than 16,000 Weber County residents were born outside the U.S.
Castro said part of this digital literacy gap could be due to distrust in banks or electronic systems. Other factors could include fear of deportation, a language barrier or a lack of economic resources.
Rebeca Romero-Douberly, coordinator of adult literacy and English for speakers of other languages for the Weber County Library, also sees a need for technology education.
“You go to the doctor's office, you go to the bus, you go to the supermarket — anything involves computers in certain ways,” she said.
Before the pandemic, the library offered a free course in computer basics. But attendance was low. Many participants left because they needed to learn a specific skill, and they weren’t interested in sitting through the whole course.
Now, Weber County Library offers one-on-one lessons.
Individuals can make appointments with staff to learn basic skills, fill out a job application or send an email. Staff also help walk-ins when they have the time. Lessons are offered in Spanish, Portuguese and English.
Romero-Douberly recalled helping a woman who came into the library to copy forms she’d plastered with white-out. Romero-Douberly showed her how to print updated forms so she wouldn’t have to reuse her old ones. Many people “have an immediate need that can’t wait three weeks,” she said, and the one-on-one model is better at helping with specific requests.
Beyond knowing how to use the internet, accessing it is another hurdle. Six percent of Ogden households have no internet, similar to the number statewide. Those without internet are concentrated in the neighborhoods around 17th Street and Wall Avenue and 30th Street and Wall Avenue, where at least 25% of households reported no internet access.
Castro said many people see web access as a rural issue, but “actually, this impacts a lot of [the] urban core.”
The Weber County Library offered hotspots for a limited time, but Romero-Douberly said the program ended when grant funding ran out. Going forward, she would like to see more free or affordable internet access programs. Patrons can get online at the library, but “it's just a matter of convenience for them,” she said.
Connecting Utah, an initiative of the Utah Broadband Center under the Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity, is working to expand broadband access. “The state aims to provide universal broadband service for all Utahns by Dec. 31, 2028,” according to the Ogden City Local Broadband Plan.
Ogden School District has information about free hotspots for students without home internet access on its website and links to a low-cost internet program from Xfinity.
Castro said that those who aren’t affected by the digital literacy gap might not know it exists at all. “Unless you're there” in communities without access to the internet or technology, “you're completely blind to it,” she said.
Disclosure: The Weber County Library is a supporter of KUER.
Macy Lipkin is a Report for America corps member who reports for KUER in northern Utah.
