For more than two decades, much of the telecom policy conversation has revolved around a challenge: closing the digital divide. We’ve debated broadband targets, technology toolkits, rural funding models, affordability programs, and spectrum policy — all with the goal of ensuring that every Canadian can get online.
To be clear, that work isn’t finished. But, as access improves and connectivity becomes nearly ubiquitous, a new divide is emerging. The next digital divide isn’t about who is connected. It’s about how we use the time we are connected. How our attention is being shaped, fragmented, and monetized.
The new divide won’t be solved with fibre builds, radio spectrum, satellites or subsidy programs. It can’t be solved by money being thrown at engineering and construction.
In the early 2000s, the internet was a scarce resource: limited speeds, limited coverage, limited devices. The policy challenge was straightforward: if we build more, we will connect more and deliver more.
Scarcity has flipped. Connectivity is now abundant. We have choices of technologies, choices of service providers, choices of speeds.
Attention is the scarce resource. Every platform, app, and service is competing for the same finite cognitive resource. Unlike bandwidth, attention can’t be expanded. It can only be redistributed — often in ways that can leave users overwhelmed, distracted, or exhausted.
There is a growing body of evidence challenging the wisdom of pushing kids and schools toward being online all the time. A couple weeks ago, in my post “The bedroom problem”, I referenced testimony in front of the US Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, showing stagnation or decline in literacy, numeracy, problem solving, creativity, and general cognitive performance among adolescents, correlated with classroom environments undergoing digital transformation. A recent article in The Sunday Times looks at how reading test scores fell in Sweden, coincident with the country’s move to screen-based learning.
Earlier this week, an article on Fortune was entitled “The U.S. spent $30 billion to ditch textbooks for laptops and tablets: The result is the first generation less cognitively capable than their parents”. The author says “Rather than empowering the generation with access to more knowledge, the technology had the opposite effect.”
These results have implications for policymakers, telecom service providers, and families.
Service providers traditionally defined their role around access: build the network, deliver the service, keep it reliable. But as the recent Rogers screen‑time study showed, families are increasingly concerned not just with how much connectivity they have, but what that connectivity enables. Parents aren’t asking for faster speeds. That study suggests they’re asking for help managing digital life.
That’s a fundamentally different expectation — one the industry needs to explore.
When nearly half of youth smartphone use happens in bedrooms, the network is no longer just a pipe. It’s an environment that influences habits, sleep, socialization, and wellbeing. Is the public redefining digital responsibility?
Historically, the idea behind “the stupid network” was that communications services providers were responsible for connectivity, and platforms were responsible for content. Users were responsible for their own behaviour online. Those boundaries have always been blurry.
The emerging digital divide is no longer between those who have broadband and those who don’t. It’s between those who can manage digital distractions and those who are overwhelmed by them. It is a next level form of digital literacy: consider it to be “Graduate level” digital literacy.
Which families will be left to navigate the attention economy alone? It is a divide much harder to measure than download speeds, but its impacts — on mental health, productivity, education, and civic engagement — may be far greater.
Is this a role for communications services providers? Connectivity providers are not the same as content companies. They don’t design algorithms, or curate feeds, but they build and operate the infrastructure upon which it all rides.
So what is reasonable to expect? Will the sector evolve from focusing on more speed, and more data to lead development of enriched digital experiences, with healthier digital habits?
Which service providers will offer tools, like usage dashboards, with time‑of‑day insights, and device‑level breakdowns? The tools would need to be simple optional controls to help households set their own boundaries.
This isn’t about paternalism. It’s about acknowledging that connectivity now shapes users’ cognitive environments, and those users need support navigating these environments.
If the first digital divide required infrastructure investment, the next one will require interdisciplinary thinking: Public health; Education; Technology and User interface design; Privacy; Consumer protection.
The original digital divide was about access. The next one is about attention. While communications services providers didn’t create the attention divide, the sector is being pulled into the conversation about how to manage it.
The service provider sector may not need to own this issue, but it will need to be part of its solution space — whether by choice or by expectation.