#DataMustFall - Is the internet the next Universal Human Right?

When you wake up in the morning, before you open your eyes, you are already scrolling on social media. Checking out the news, your uncle’s son graduated and Russia/Ukraine is still waging on. It's suggested that by this year 2022, around 5 billion people worldwide can harness the power of the internet.

After googling the weather, you get down typing in the office address into a GPS app like Maps to get yourself to work. You either listen to a morning podcast from your favourite personality or stream the radio online for entertainment on route.

Upon arriving at work, you are immediately met with the need to be plugged in: calls, emails, messages, meetings and office cooler talk is all done through the nifty worldwide web.

Returning home through the GPS, checking your messages and making sure to tie up any loose ends on your banking app, you furiously scroll through the Food Network Channel website to find a recipe you saw on their Tik Tok account that would be the perfect meal for you and your family.

It all makes you wonder: why am I paying for a service I have no choice but to need in my life? Why is the internet not a right like water and education?

You are using the internet to read this, how else could we have had this discussion?

The internet has transformed since its inception in the 1980s; it no longer serves its original purpose as it has grown with humans and society over the years.From MSN to Amazon cashless stores, the internet is now integrated into society.

The internet was once a luxury and priced accordingly. In the early 90s, the internet started to cement itself as a piece of technology to connect computers across the globe.

Namely, a tool for the everyday man; the citizen. The interwebs bridges societal gaps and gives the internet is a basic need for almost all of the planet.

In 2020, the amount of data on the internet hit 40 zettabytes. A zettabyte is about a trillion gigabytes. I don’t think it would be possible for a person to access even half of the information available on the internet in one lifetime.

Many businesses use email or even WhatsApp to run their business. There are 5million users with WhatsApp business accounts.

Whichever side you stand on this debate of ‘what used to work better’, here is what the internet has replaced:

GPS services replaced maps

E-readers replaced books

Email replaced mail.

The domino effect on an already existing industry was disastrous but what many consider a necessary evil in the internet's rise to an becoming essential human tool.

You don't even need to leave your house with the sheer access that the internet gives us to a network more significant than we can imagine.

As illustrated in a 2019 study from the University of Birmingham, there is a movement/rise in the scholarly belief that the internet is fast becoming a HumanRight. As we require the internet more and more in our daily functions, when will there be universal free access to the internet?

"As people unable to get online, particularly in developing countries, lack meaningful ways to influence the global players shaping their everyday lives,"

Sadly, it is easy to illustrate the impact of having little to no internet access on humans and society. There is a fundamental threat to existence, further arguing for free access to the internet for all.

According to UNICEF, two thirds of children across the world can’t access the internet for educational purposes, widening the divide between education in poorer nations vs richer nations in the world. This further begs for calls for universal access to education.

Many nations and regions of the world have made headway in giving their citizens access to the internet. In a state in the south of the Indian sub-continent,Kerala has declared universal internet access a Human Right and aims to provide it for its people.

Earlier this year, South African Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies Khumbudzo Ntshavheni said data will be for all in her state of the national debate in February of this year. The aim/promise is to give every South African 10 GB of internet data a month.

While this may address our immediate need to consume data, it doesn't remedy the long-term concern that we should be moving towards universal access to the internet; something far more sustainable.

The cost of internet data across the globe suggests that as more people use the internet, an individual has a minimal cost.

Data is affordable in countries like India and Nigeria because of competitive markets and population growth. However, we are still paying in the hundreds for internet inSouth Africa.

#DataMustFall, a South African movement seeking to create access the internet a fundamental HumanRight,

We must acknowledge the potential disaster in creating a fundamental, new human right. Not by the nature of Human Rights but human error. Time and time again, we have seen state-owned enterprises fail the people and fail to follow the proper channels to ensure services are delivered.

It is time to consider whether we can treat data like a luxury item or a deep desire like the human love for chocolate or wine. The internet has become fundamental to our existence and, undoubtedly, a right.