How Far Can Rocket Fiber Fly Into Detroit’s Neighborhoods? by Mitch Shapiro and Bill Dutton

The 2015 launch of Rocket Fiber is poised to add super-fast Internet connectivity to the expanding arsenal of revitalization tools available in Detroit, starting with the city’s downtown central business district, followed by neighboring areas such as Midtown and Corktown. This is an important and exciting development likely to begin reaping benefits in these areas over the next few years.

One of the more challenging sets of questions facing Rocket Fiber–and virtually every effort to revitalize Detroit–is whether and how the city’s rising tide of investment can positively impact those households and businesses most distant—both physically and economically– from the city’s expanding beachhead of tech-fueled growth.

This is one of a range of questions driving the Quello Center’s launch of the ICT4Detroit program.* Through this program, the Center aims to develop research projects and alliances to help address issues concerning how ICTs (information and communication technology) can support the revitalization of Detroit. High on the list of issues central to the ICT4Detroit research agenda is how can the benefits of high speed access and other ICT be brought to more of Detroit’s citizens and organizations.

A big challenge, and a big opportunity

On one hand, a growing body of research has shown that high-speed access and related ICT, such as mobile Internet and the Internet of Things, have potential to boost economic growth, civic life and the quality and accessibility of education, healthcare, transportation, public safety and other government services. Research has also shown that fiber’s nearly unlimited capacity, low maintenance costs, easy upgradability and backhaul support for high-speed wireless connectivity make it particularly well suited to serve as the core of a city’s communication infrastructure.

So why don’t we already have fiber deployed in every neighborhood in every city, including Detroit? The reason, as every network investor (whether private or public) knows, is that high-speed networks are expensive to build, with high fixed costs and business cases heavily influenced by density, take rates and average revenue per unit (ARPU). As a result, the economics of extending fiber beyond Detroit’s central core into areas with low income and relatively low housing density are especially challenging.

The result is a situation with potentially large and much needed social benefits, but also considerable risk and uncertainty for network investors. This high-payoff, high-risk combination cries out for strategies aimed at reducing uncertainty, risk and cost, while increasing the probability and magnitude of benefits for underserved and disadvantaged populations, including those that can help support network capital and operating costs.

In response to this need, the Quello Center has begun to develop an independent research program intended to support innovative and successful strategies for increasing the availability, affordability and benefits of high-speed Internet access in Detroit.

In doing so, we seek input, guidance, support and collaboration from Detroit’s leaders, businesses, technologists, citizens and community organizations working hard to revitalize the city, as well as from others in the research and philanthropic communities focused on digital divide-related issues.

As a first step, we invite feedback and suggestions on this draft outline of the research program we have in mind.

1. Examine the current status of availability, usage and benefits of broadband Internet access in Detroit’s neighborhoods: by individuals, households, businesses and “community anchor institutions” such as libraries, schools, healthcare facilities, non-profit organizations and neighborhood associations.

2. Explore the currently unmet potential demand for broadband connectivity and services by these various segments of the Detroit community, including price sensitivity, revenue potential and externalities.

3. Explore potential demand for high speed connectivity associated with the evolving Internet of Things (IoT), and how this evolution (and its benefits) could be expedited and enhanced by increased availability of fiber-enabled high speed connectivity.

4. Better understand economic and other barriers to expanding demand to levels sufficient to justify network expansion deeper into the city’s neighborhoods, as well as factors with potential to help overcome these barriers.

5. Identify, characterize and prioritize potential near-term and longer-term opportunities to economically expand the reach of affordable and high speed access and IoT connectivity in Detroit, especially in ways that promote economic growth and community development in the city’s economically distressed neighborhoods.

6. Explore creative business strategies (e.g., demand aggregation, pre-subscriptions); technology options (e.g., wireless extensions, low-cost fiber installation techniques); alliances (e.g., with local community organizations and efforts to promote digital literacy); funding sources and strategies, and; local zoning and other public policies with potential to support economically viable expansion and beneficial use of high-speed connectivity in these neighborhoods.

In terms of methodology, we would expect this research to include in-depth interviews with key stakeholders and experts, quantitative surveys of citizens, businesses and community anchor institutions, and financial analysis of alternative strategies and scenarios.

The Quello Center views such research as a potential pillar of its ICT4Detroit initiative, focusing as it does on the key issue of making high-speed access more available, affordable and attractive in a city currently burdened by large economic challenges and low Internet penetration, yet with much potential to benefit from cost-effective expansion of broadband access and usage. A significant stream of prior research has focused on the role of ICT, and the Internet in particular, in social and economic development of urban areas. However, relatively little has focused on the particular historical, social and economic circumstances of Detroit.
We welcome your input and support as we seek to explore the unique Detroit factors shaping the role of broadband connectivity and other ICT in the revitalization of this great American city.

Mitch Shapiro and Bill Dutton, Quello Center

Notes

* See: https://quello.msu.edu/divi/research/ict4detroit-the-role-of-ict-in-collaboration-for-detroits-revitalization/

Primary takeaways

Digital inequality shows larger impacts on youth academic performance as compared to time spent on screens.
Digital skills play a significant role in mediating unstructured online engagement (social media use, playing video games, browsing the web) and youth academic, social, and psychosocial development.
Unstructured online engagement and face-to-face social interaction are complementary and continuously interact to create and enhance youth capital outcomes.

A familiar story: concerns of screen time

Today’s discussions of adolescent well-being have coalesced around a clear narrative: teenagers spend too much time online, and their academic performance, mental health, and social lives are deteriorating as a result. A steady stream of academic papers, books, and op-eds, alongside a growing number of policy proposals––school phone bans, age-gated social media use, restrictive screen-time limits––rest on the same underlying claim, aligning with a contemporary, digitized version of the displacement hypothesis:

Screen time, particularly the unstructured, free-time spent on social media, gaming, watching video content, or browsing the web, is said to displace the productive face-to-face activities that build adolescents into capable adults.

The implied and often practiced solution is restriction. In response, this dissertation tested this claim directly, and placed it within the broader context of adolescence.

Across three years, I followed 653 Michigan adolescents from early through late adolescence: in grades 8 or 9 (survey one, 2019) to grades 11 or 12 (survey two, 2022). Notably, these students, studied over time, were part of a broader pooled sample of 5,825 students across the same eighteen highschools. The study window captured the year before and the year after the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic and related lockdown orders, functioning as an unprecedented stress test for theories of adolescent social, academic, and digital life and, importantly, as a benchmark to compare the effects of pandemic-related change and inequality to those effects from screen time alone.

Across four studies of adolescents, consisting of six cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses, findings are not consistent with the displacement narrative, nor the broader concerns about the time youth spend on screens.

Findings are, however, consistent with something the current public and (most) academic discussions have largely overlooked or ignored: the gaps and inequalities that determine whether adolescents can access and use the internet meaningfully in the first place.

What the displacement hypothesis overlooks

Displacement and related research and policy concerning the time young people spend online assumes a “zero-sum” model of adolescent day-to-day time. An hour online is an hour not spent studying, reading, sleeping, or interacting face-to-face (i.e., time spent on more productive or developmentally “better” activity).

Indeed, this makes sense logically. However, as an empirical claim, this model requires time spent online to behave differently from all other ways adolescents allocate time; it must produce uniquely negative outcomes and be inherently harmful across digital contexts, rather than the typical mix of trade-offs corresponding to, and often overlooked among any other social or developmental context.

Yet, online time does not differ from other youth activity. Instead, I find it has a mix of pros, cons, and even some “uniquely digital” benefits which youth utilize for social and academic gains. When I compared unstructured digital media use against traditional face-to-face interaction and activities, both produced similar patterns: some negative associations with academic outcomes, some null, and some positive.

Trade-offs within traditional face-to-face activity (for example, social time with friends and family, or time spent in after-school extracurriculars) are treated as ordinary developmental experiences that must be experienced for the betterment of development. The identical trade-offs involving digital time tend to be overlooked or ignored, and online engagement is perceived as altogether harmful.

A growing body of evidence, including this dissertation, do not support that distinction. Indeed, the developmental context is routinely misread, leaving out the context of the experiences and time spent on digital, as well as face-to-face activities, interactions, existing inequalities, and changes inherent to development. As such, I proposed a novel framework to understand these contexts:

Digital capital exchange

Rather than treating screen time as a unified harm, this dissertation advances an “exchange”-based framework, grounded in James Coleman’s theories of youth capital and digital inequality scholarship, particularly following Eszter Hargittai, Jan van Dijk, and Alexander van Deursen (see this list of all dissertation references for full works).

The core proposition is that adolescents’ online engagement is not an alternative to developmental activity but another, albiet modern domain through which young people accumulate and mobilize online resources––particularly digital skills––that work alongside existing social networks and experiences to be exchanged for human capital (measured as: academic achievement, aspirations, STEM interest) and social capital (peer networks, community participation, extracurricular involvement).

Online time is not the mechanism; instead, it is digital skills that I find to be the most vital component in youth capital exchange and enhancement. Unstructured online engagement contributes to online skills; those skills, accumulated and mobilized alongside existing peer, family, and community networks, translate into the outcomes researchers and parents care about, i.e., academic achievement, aspirations, and face-to-face interaction and social networks.

This digital capital framework treats online and in-person contexts as complementary rather than antagonistic, and it situates adolescents’ digital lives within the structural conditions––connectivity quality, device reliability, autonomy of use––that determine whether exchange can occur at all.

Methods (in brief)

Paper-and-pencil surveys were administered to students in classrooms at two time-points: spring 2019 (N=2,876) and spring 2022 (N=2,949), across the same eighteen predominantly rural Michigan schools, grades 8–12. Official, nationally-ranked standardized reading, writing, and math test scores (PSAT 8/9, PSAT 10, SAT; College Board) were then anonymously linked to students’ survey responses with the help of participating districts.

Cross-sectional path analyses modeled pooled and wave-specific samples (pooled N=5,825); two-wave cross-lagged panel models tested reciprocal, longitudinal relationships on the 653 students who completed both surveys. Multi-group analyses of the cross-lagged panel models compared relationships between girls (N=345) and boys (N=308). All longitudinal models included time-invariant socioeconomic covariates as well as time-varying covariates to reduce omitted-variable bias.

Key findings: an overview

To summarize, to the best of my ability, eight chapters across 376 pages, I present two primary findings:

First: digital inequality predicted larger and more consistent declines in human capital than screen time did.

Unreliable home internet and technology maintenance problems––experiencing and/or dealing with broken or outdated devices and software, restrictive school-issued hardware, issues with connecting to or maintaining internet access––decreased youth GPA and standardized test achievement. And, these effect sizes were substantially larger than any negative direct effect from unstructured digital media use.

Across all four empirical studies, digital inequality emerged as the most substantial predictor of academic and developmental decline.

Second: digital skills mediated the relationship between online time and adolescent academic and social outcomes.

Unstructured digital media use, particularly online gaming and web browsing, predicted higher internet and social media skills for adolescents, which in turn predicted stronger academic achievement and self-efficacy (human capital), and social interaction and extracurricular participation (social capital). The positive indirect effect of screen time through skills offset or exceeded any small negative direct effects across several outcomes (supporting our existing peer-reviewed work: Hales & Hampton, 2025, and which you can read more about here).

These exchange processes were amplified when peer and family networks were modeled alongside digital skills, consistent with the premise that online and offline contexts operate together rather than in competition. The effect was not universal: social media skills amplified rather than offset a negative association with consistency of interest, one of the two subscales of grit. The exchange framework describes a contextual and conditional, domain-specific mechanism, not a blanket defense of time spent online.

Implications

If digital inequality, and not screen time, is the primary predictor of adolescent academic and developmental decline, and still warrants concern regarding access quality and experience even with the broader adoption of digital devices across the United States, the current policy emphasis on restriction is pointed at the wrong target. The evidence supports a different set of priorities.

Stable, reliable home (fast) broadband should be treated as an educational prerequisite rather than a consumer amenity. Unreliable connectivity exerted larger downward pressure on human capital than any measure of screen time, and that pressure intensified during the pandemic-era reliance on digital infrastructure. Technology maintenance, device repair, replacement, technical support, and the flexibility to install software and explore the web autonomously, matters as much as initial access, and school-issued devices that restrict autonomous use appear to hinder skill accumulation rather than support it.

Restrictive parental mediation of internet use was negatively associated with grit and self-efficacy at magnitudes comparable to the positive contributions of face-to-face activity. This challenges the assumption that digital restriction functions protectively. Instructive mediation, teaching adolescents to verify information, navigate platforms critically, and mobilize online resources toward meaningful ends, is the posture the data supports.

Finally, the technical skill-building that occurs through gaming, self-directed exploration, and deep web use is skill-building, not wasted time. Closing the persistent gender gap in these domains likely requires legitimizing technical play for girls, rather than restricting it for everyone.

None of the above is an argument that screen time is benign. It is an argument that screen time is the wrong focus, particularly when studied mostly in isolation. Context matters substantially, whether that is time spent on other activities during adolescence, the period of adolescence itself, digital inequality, resources gained from such online use, and how all such factors interact. The factor that predicts whether a given adolescent can convert online engagement into capital outcomes is structural: access, infrastructure, skills, and the autonomy to use them. These factors are distributed unevenly, and its uneven distribution, not hours logged, is what separates adolescents who thrive from those who fall behind.

The full dissertation is available through Michigan State University’s ProQuest archive, or see the embedded full-text PDF below. I’m happy to share papers, preprints, or the underlying framework with anyone interested and working in this area––don’t hesitate to reach out via my contact form. Thanks for reading.

Tags: Detroit fiber optics research Rocket Fiber

How Far Can Rocket Fiber Fly Into Detroit’s Neighborhoods? by Mitch Shapiro and Bill Dutton