Until the third quarter of the twentieth century, the demand for information technology education was fairly limited. With the exception of people actively involved in education, the military, or technological fields, most information was managed on paper. The popularization of the personal computer, coupled with the dramatic expansion of the internet in the 1980s and 1990s, meant that IT skills were becoming more and more valuable, even essential.
Only a generation ago, adults could manage their entire lives without directly touching a keyboard. In the second decade of the twenty-first century, this complete lack of IT education would render a person functionally illiterate, without access to basic government and consumer information, goods and services. This phenomenon, dividing the IT "haves" from the IT "have-nots," is known as the "digital divide," and it may be a more meaningful marker of socio-economic status in the United States than income or education.
Education in IT affects a person's ability to access basic information and communicate it effectively to others. Students without IT skills, or regular access to Internet-enabled computers, will feel the effects of this ignorance as early as primary school, and this will handicap their efforts to grow academically and potentially hinder their social development through popular social networking media. Employees in all but the most menial of fields are expected to maintain basic IT skills such as sending emails or filling in online forms, and advancement is often tied to an individual's ability to make use of information networks on the Internet.
The fault line of the digital divide lies on the economic costs of rapid, broadband access to the Internet. In a 2003 study by the US government, 38.9% of individuals without broadband access cited cost as the reason. As employment advancement depends more and more on IT education, those who cannot afford broadband now are more likely to fall further behind in the future.
The digital divide has strong geographic correlations, as rural areas tend to be less well-served by broadband access.