the.com/digital divide

means The gap between people who have affordable, reliable access to digital technology and the internet, and those who don't — a split that tracks income, geography, age, and education.

from A straightforward policy-world compound, not a borrowing or a myth: 'digital' (relating to computers and digital technology) plus 'divide' used in its sense of a split or gulf between groups, on the model of older phrases like 'the gender divide.' It surfaced in American political and tech-policy talk as home computers and the internet spread unevenly in the 1990s, gained currency through government and think-tank reports on who had access to wired classrooms and dial-up lines, and stuck because it named a worry plainly: technology was arriving like infrastructure, and infrastructure has always had a wrong side of the tracks.