Posted on Leave a comment

When It’s Good For At-Risk Youth to Hang Out At McDonald’s: Searching for Connectivity in All the Wrong Places

The Web-Deprived Study at McDonald’s” describes a role reversal: in the usual proposal universe, McDonald’s is the enemy—a purveyor of simple sugars and nutritionally bankrupt edible food-like substances that help drive obesity and disease. Internet service providers (ISPs), however, are supposed purveyors of knowledge and connections vital to linking the modern world. But many American ISPs have effectively no competition, and they charge accordingly—which means that many low-income families can’t afford Internet access*

As a result, “Access to the Web has expanded [in recent years . . . ] but roughly a third of households with income of less than $30,000 a year and teens living at home still don’t have broadband access there, according to the Pew Research Center.” So McDonald’s, which offers free WiFi in most of its restaurants (using the term loosely), is the unexpected corporate hero in this article. Astute grant writers should pay attention, because future projects dealing with food and nutrition also need to address the digital divide.

In the next Carol M. White Physical Education Proposals we write, for example, we’ll stress WiFi access points at the project delivery sites and libraries, which offer an alternative to McDonald’s, with its allure of Big Macs and McNuggets.

But in proposals that deal with connectivity—like the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program—we’ll mention that McDonald’s, Starbucks, and other large corporations offer free Internet access, and, as a result, participants may be tempted buy their non-nutritious food to get the WiFi. So those participants need the alternatives that the project will provide—along with nutritional counseling. Our hypothetical proposal will point out that nutritional counseling might seem counter-intuitive, but sometimes well-supported yet counter-intuitive arguments seem stronger.


* A brief example: when I lived in Tucson, Arizona, Comcast offered 12 Mbs down for $60 a month. Qwest, the only “competition,” offered . . . 1.5 Mbs down. Max. In 1998, that would have been incredible. Today, it’s a joke. Comcast was (and is) a de facto monopoly and charged accordingly.

By contrast, now I’m living in Manhattan, where Verizon, RCN, Time Warner, and others offer Internet connections; I’m buying 25 Mbs down for $30 a month from RCN. Of course, I can still wander over to Starbucks for their “free” WiFi, but at $4 a cup for a wet cap no fat, the free access access gets pretty pricy pretty fast. I can’t bring myself to enter the McDonald’s’ den of food inequity.