Digital Exclusion, Mental Health and Entrepreneurial Failure of Township Youth Entrepreneurs

This study examines how digital exclusion is perceived in shaping the reported psychological distress and entrepreneurial challenges of township youth entrepreneurs in Mdantsane Township, Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality, East London, South Africa. The study focuses on limited access to devices, connectivity, digital skills, and online markets, which affect business continuity and psychological well-being. The study adopts a qualitative research design. Data for the study were generated through semi-structured interviews with 21 mixed-gender township youth entrepreneurs. Purposive sampling, a nonprobability sampling technique, was used to reach participants whose ventures depended on digital tools for communication, marketing, or transactions. Reflexive thematic analysis was used to analyse the interviews. Five themes emerged from the analysis. First, youth entrepreneurs’ digital exclusion was experienced as market invisibility and weakened customer retention. Second, technostress and emotional depletion were reported by the entrepreneurs under constant connectivity pressure without adequate digital support. Third, repeated business setbacks were also described as cumulative vulnerability linked to self-blame, withdrawal and eventual venture closure. Fourth, the township youth entrepreneurs used improvisation, peer learning and family support, but all these strategies were experienced as partial rather than transformative resilience. Fifth, internalising structural exclusion was described by participants, whereby systemic digital barriers were interpreted as personal inadequacy. The findings of the study suggest that digital exclusion is not only an access problem, but it is also a business survival concern which are associated in participants’ accounts with reported psychological distress. The study used a small qualitative sample and was limited to a single township. But it still offers relevant policy insights for targeted digital access, business support for youth entrepreneurs, and mental health-informed entrepreneurship interventions.