Services that presuppose a smartphone exclude non-users by design

What it is

When a service's only entry point is "the app, the mini-program, online only", people who do not use smartphones are excluded from it — not "slower", but cannot use it at all. Those without a device, those who cannot afford data, those who cannot work the interface, and those unwilling to bind a bank card into a phone for safety or privacy reasons all stop at this door. The phenomenon is digital exclusion.

"By design" is the operative word: the exclusion is not malice but the straightforward consequence of assuming "everyone has a smartphone and can use it". Where the assumption fails, a whole population is locked out.

Why it happens

Why does the exclusion happen? Van Dijk's theory of the digital divide splits technology access into four sequential stages: motivational access (wanting to) → physical access (having device and network) → skills access (being able to operate) → usage access (sustainably deriving useful service). Real populations stall at each stage: some don't want it, some can't afford it, some can't learn it, some can pay but can't complete tasks.

Digital service design defaults to users having cleared all four. An online-only entrance thus becomes a precondition check: fail any single stage and the service refuses you — while the institution sees "the online channel is running fine" and never sees the distribution of people held at the door.

One more layer: cost is displaced. What going online saves the institution (counters, staff) partly reappears as the excluded person's cost — finding someone to do it for them, travelling far, or giving up on the service. The institution's ledger and society's total ledger are not the same ledger.

Studying it

• Stratified divide surveys: the questionnaire paradigm built on van Dijk's resources-and-appropriation model, measuring access stage by stage; national statistics bodies and surveys such as the EU's DESI and Pew's connectivity work provide distribution baselines.
• Impact assessments of digitalisation: comparing service completion rates by population group before and after an "online only" policy, identifying groups whose completion falls.
• Proxy-use studies: examining the chains through which excluded people lean on relatives and community helpers — and where those chains break.

One methodological caution: the four access stages must be measured separately, not merged into a single "can they use the internet" variable. Rising physical access is routinely misread as the disappearance of exclusion, when the skills and usage divides deserve separate attention precisely after devices spread.

Where it stops holding

• High device penetration does not mean exclusion has vanished. Owning a smartphone and completing a government transaction in an app are separated by skill, confidence, language and data cost; within a "90% penetration" statistic, the remaining tenth is often the heaviest user of the services.
• Exclusion is not limited to having nothing. Paying data by the megabyte, sharing one device, operating only with a child's help — these partial-access states equally fail to support a "self-service online anytime" design assumption.
• Commercial and public contexts differ in weight. An online-only food delivery app is a business choice; an online-only gate to government paperwork, healthcare booking or basic finance is a delivery channel for civic obligations and rights. The exclusion differs in ethical character, and so does the remedy it demands.

Applying it

• Run an access impact assessment before any "online only" decision: estimate the four-stage access distribution by population group and quantify the share that cannot get through the door.
• Keep non-digital paths for critical services (government paperwork, medical booking, utility payment), and publish the impact assessment before removing any non-digital entrance.
• Design intermediate states for partial-access users: formal delegation and authorisation flows, staffed phone lines — rather than requiring everyone to complete the online flow independently.
• How to check: recruit a sample of non-users from the community, have them actually attempt the service journey, and record where they stop and how long a proxy detour costs. The distribution of stopping points marks where alternative channels belong.

Related

• Same group: Z8.05.2 Alternative channels need functional parity, not token retention · Z8.05.3 Exclusion concentrates among older, low-income and disabled people · Z8.05.4 Alternative entrances need to be as prominent as the main one, not hidden in a corner
• Nearby: Z8.02 Touchless services and public terminals · Z8.06 Accessibility requirements for public facilities
• Search terms: digital exclusion · digital divide · digital by default · e-government access