These days you can buy no-name android tablets from Walmart for $44. For example: http://www.walmart.com/ip/Ematic-7-Tablet-with-4GB-Memory-an...
That's cheap enough that there's no reason for a poor person NOT to have one.
That's cheap enough that there's no reason for a poor person NOT to have one.
Jack Monroe was poor and a blogger. She wrote a powerful piece about it once: ( http://agirlcalledjack.com/2012/07/30/hunger-hurts/ ):
> This morning, small boy had one of the last Weetabix, mashed with water, with a glass of tap water to wash it down with. ‘Where’s Mummys breakfast?’ he asks, big blue eyes and two year old concern. I tell him I’m not hungry, but the rumblings of my stomach call me a liar. But these are the things that we do.
> ...
> Then you start to take lightbulbs out. If they aren’t there, you can’t turn them on.
> ...
> Poverty is the sinking feeling when your small boy finishes his one weetabix and says ‘more mummy, bread and jam please mummy’ as you’re wondering whether to take the TV or the guitar to the pawn shop first, and how to tell him that there is no bread or jam.
These are the people who can't afford $44.
Plus if you are living a chaotic life, keeping hold of something like this, keeping it secure, dry and charged can be a mission in itself. And when times are hard what is going to be the easiest way to get some money (for bus fare to that job)...
So yes, if you are in the right location, with the time and means to get to an open wifi connection, and have the spare money to buy a tool like this, then awesome. But a lot of people aren't.
When you're functionally illiterate and have spent a few years living on the streets, are not good with money, and have a generally chaotic lifestyle, then you may well not think about going to your local supermarket to buy a cheap tablet (even if you know what a tablet is)
For some folks, their lack of ability to cope with (and fit into) modern life is truly incapacitating.