For most of us, using the internet is part of daily life. We use digital skills at work, to socialise, to access healthcare, buy groceries, to bank, and to make everyday, time-consuming tasks easier. As a consequence, people without the access, confidence and basic digital skills to use the internet can face exclusion in a digital world, in which online services are fast becoming the norm.
The good news: digital inclusion has increased in the last five years, accelerated in the pandemic as people went online through necessity. New research estimates the number of people without basic digital skills in the UK will have fallen from 12.4 million at the end of 2019 to 10.6 million by the end of 2022. Local government public services have played a valued role in achieving this.
The bad news: not everyone benefited. The digital divide may have narrowed in the past two years, but it has also deepened. This has direct implications for any levelling up agenda.
That’s why Good Things Foundation – the UK’s leading digital inclusion charity – partnered with Capita and Cebr to appraise the economic impact of digital inclusion.
Sounding the alarm
Cebr’s new report warns that without further intervention in building basic digital skills an estimated 5.8 million people will remain digitally excluded by the end of 2032, of whom 3.7 million are aged 75 years or older.
As we emerge from the worst of the pandemic and into a cost of living crisis, there is a high risk that tackling digital exclusion will drop down local government’s list of priorities.
Digital inclusion may never rise to the top, but failure to invest in tackling digital exclusion will directly undermine pretty well everything else on that priority list: employment, education, economic growth, social cohesion, democratic participation, public health, adult social care, sustainability, creative and tech industries and more.