MEDIAACADEMY INTERNATIONAL
There was a time when illiteracy had a fairly straightforward meaning: the inability to read and write. A person who could read a newspaper, write a letter, understand basic arithmetic and sign a document was considered functionally equipped to participate in society.
That definition is no longer sufficient.
A person may hold a university degree, speak impeccable English, manage employees and possess years of professional experience, yet struggle to create a spreadsheet, participate effectively in a video conference, identify an online scam, complete an electronic application, retrieve information from cloud storage, use artificial intelligence responsibly, or distinguish credible information from digital misinformation.
That person is certainly not illiterate in the traditional sense. But in an increasingly digital society, he or she may be experiencing something equally consequential: digital illiteracy.
And this is where one of the great contradictions of our age emerges.
We have more smartphones than ever before. More people are connected. Social media has penetrated communities that barely had reliable telecommunications two decades ago. Artificial intelligence is becoming accessible from an ordinary mobile phone.
Yet access to technology is not the same thing as competence with technology.
The world therefore faces two digital divides simultaneously: the divide between those who are connected and those who are not, and the less visible divide between those who consume technology and those who can productively use it.
The second may prove even more consequential.
THE NEW FACE OF ILLITERACY
Digital literacy should not be confused with knowing how to operate WhatsApp, scroll through Facebook, watch TikTok videos or make a mobile transfer.
Those activities demonstrate familiarity with particular applications. Digital competence goes considerably further.
UNESCO's approach to digital skills encompasses the ability to access, manage, understand, integrate, communicate, evaluate and create information safely and appropriately using digital technologies. The OECD similarly treats competence in technology-rich environments as involving both the ability to operate digital tools and the cognitive capacity to use them to solve practical problems.
That distinction matters.
Someone who spends six hours every day on a smartphone can still be digitally unprepared.
Consider a young graduate who can maintain five social-media accounts but cannot properly format a CV, organize files into folders, construct a spreadsheet, search intelligently for academic information or compose a professional email.
Consider a business owner who receives payments electronically but cannot maintain digital inventory records, analyse sales data or secure the company's online accounts.
Consider a senior professional who delegates every computer-related task because opening attachments, converting documents or navigating an online portal creates anxiety.
These are not hypothetical problems anymore.
Increasingly, they determine who participates confidently in modern society and who must constantly depend upon somebody else.
THE NUMBERS SHOULD CONCERN US
The digital revolution is enormous, but it is far from universal.
According to United Nations statistics, 5.5 billion people were using the Internet in 2024—about 68 percent of humanity. Yet approximately 2.6 billion people remained offline. Internet penetration had risen dramatically from 40 percent in 2015, but one-third of humanity was still outside the connected world.
The inequality becomes even clearer when income levels are considered.
ITU data show that approximately 93 percent of people in high-income countries were online in 2024, compared with only 27 percent in low-income countries.
But connectivity tells only half the story.
UNESCO's latest reporting on SDG 4 shows something revealing about what connected people can actually do. Across countries reporting data for 2022–2024, the median figures indicate that about 68 percent of adults could participate in social networks, but only 54 percent could copy or move files, 33 percent could prepare electronic presentations, 24 percent verified information found online, and just 6 percent possessed programming skills. UNESCO cautions that the reporting countries are disproportionately upper-middle- and high-income economies, so these figures should not be treated as perfectly representative of the whole world.
Still, the pattern is striking.
Social participation is far ahead of productive digital competence.
We have become remarkably good at consuming digital content. The urgent question is whether we are equally capable of creating, evaluating and using it.
More on this in the next topic: ESCAPING THE DIGITAL ILLITERACY TRAP - 2
That definition is no longer sufficient.
A person may hold a university degree, speak impeccable English, manage employees and possess years of professional experience, yet struggle to create a spreadsheet, participate effectively in a video conference, identify an online scam, complete an electronic application, retrieve information from cloud storage, use artificial intelligence responsibly, or distinguish credible information from digital misinformation.
That person is certainly not illiterate in the traditional sense. But in an increasingly digital society, he or she may be experiencing something equally consequential: digital illiteracy.
And this is where one of the great contradictions of our age emerges.
We have more smartphones than ever before. More people are connected. Social media has penetrated communities that barely had reliable telecommunications two decades ago. Artificial intelligence is becoming accessible from an ordinary mobile phone.
Yet access to technology is not the same thing as competence with technology.
The world therefore faces two digital divides simultaneously: the divide between those who are connected and those who are not, and the less visible divide between those who consume technology and those who can productively use it.
The second may prove even more consequential.
THE NEW FACE OF ILLITERACY
Digital literacy should not be confused with knowing how to operate WhatsApp, scroll through Facebook, watch TikTok videos or make a mobile transfer.
Those activities demonstrate familiarity with particular applications. Digital competence goes considerably further.
UNESCO's approach to digital skills encompasses the ability to access, manage, understand, integrate, communicate, evaluate and create information safely and appropriately using digital technologies. The OECD similarly treats competence in technology-rich environments as involving both the ability to operate digital tools and the cognitive capacity to use them to solve practical problems.
That distinction matters.
Someone who spends six hours every day on a smartphone can still be digitally unprepared.
Consider a young graduate who can maintain five social-media accounts but cannot properly format a CV, organize files into folders, construct a spreadsheet, search intelligently for academic information or compose a professional email.
Consider a business owner who receives payments electronically but cannot maintain digital inventory records, analyse sales data or secure the company's online accounts.
Consider a senior professional who delegates every computer-related task because opening attachments, converting documents or navigating an online portal creates anxiety.
These are not hypothetical problems anymore.
Increasingly, they determine who participates confidently in modern society and who must constantly depend upon somebody else.
THE NUMBERS SHOULD CONCERN US
The digital revolution is enormous, but it is far from universal.
According to United Nations statistics, 5.5 billion people were using the Internet in 2024—about 68 percent of humanity. Yet approximately 2.6 billion people remained offline. Internet penetration had risen dramatically from 40 percent in 2015, but one-third of humanity was still outside the connected world.
The inequality becomes even clearer when income levels are considered.
ITU data show that approximately 93 percent of people in high-income countries were online in 2024, compared with only 27 percent in low-income countries.
But connectivity tells only half the story.
UNESCO's latest reporting on SDG 4 shows something revealing about what connected people can actually do. Across countries reporting data for 2022–2024, the median figures indicate that about 68 percent of adults could participate in social networks, but only 54 percent could copy or move files, 33 percent could prepare electronic presentations, 24 percent verified information found online, and just 6 percent possessed programming skills. UNESCO cautions that the reporting countries are disproportionately upper-middle- and high-income economies, so these figures should not be treated as perfectly representative of the whole world.
Still, the pattern is striking.
Social participation is far ahead of productive digital competence.
We have become remarkably good at consuming digital content. The urgent question is whether we are equally capable of creating, evaluating and using it.
More on this in the next topic: ESCAPING THE DIGITAL ILLITERACY TRAP - 2
