Who Benefits from Internet Usage? the Digital Divide of Mobilized Online Resources

Several studies have shown that the higher educated possess more or better Internet and computer related skills, such as the ability to find and process information. This implies that Internet usage should therefore also be more profitable for the higher educated, which is something that has not been studied often. We study this profitability of Internet usage in terms of the resources that people mobilize through their Internet usage, and we examine whether the higher educated mobilize online resources to a greater extent than the lower educated.

In order to learn more about these mobilized online resources we look at negative life events that are experienced by respondents and the way in which they dealt with those events. We analyze newly collected data from a questionnaire that was designed to test an inventory of online coping resources. This inventory consists of seven dimension of online coping (with 3 items each), such as emotional and instrumental support, active coping, and finding distraction.

We hypothesize that the higher educated mobilize online resources to a greater extent with regard to all seven dimensions. This challenges some of the insights of social capital research, which often finds the extent of emotional support to be unrelated to social status. Moreover, unlike what is normally found with regard to offline networks, the support comes from weak ties relatively often.