15-29 year olds are the age category of the French population most equipped with smartphones, tablets and computers, according to a study by the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies, INSEE. But the phenomenon of illiteracy is gaining ground for a significant proportion of young French people lacking digital skills.
While the Covid-19 health crisis has greatly accentuated the digital divide within the senior population, as revealed by the latest INSEE report“illectronism”, a term which is the transposition of the concept of illiteracy in the digital field, now affects many young people.
One out of six young French people consider themselves not or not at all competent to use office software such as word processing, for example. One in five is unable to complete online forms for electronic administrations. The phenomenon of “abandoners”, that is to say all those who completely abandon the web, is gaining ground. The 13 million adults, of all ages, who today find themselves helpless in the face of an accelerated dematerialization of public and private services, tend to give up using the digital tools at their disposal, alert many associations.
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And the problem is not hardware, because 9 out of 10 French people now have a device to connect to the internet. The speed of development of technological innovations combined with the slow pace of skills acquisition for some people, creates many digital dropouts.
But social networks and instant messaging, by locking young users into closed online communities, would also accentuate the phenomenon, believes Edouard Bliek, managing director of Stedy, a consulting firm in digital technologies and services for businesses. “ The problem is twofold, the first is a lack of curiosity to manage, train and understand how online devices work outside of the very personal digital environment used by the younger generation of Internet users. The fact of having fallen very early into a virtual environment consisting of only 3 or 4 applications on your mobile on which you spend many hours a day ultimately disconnects you from a form of reality of the possible uses offered by digital technology. Furthermore, there is also a lack of information, the education system no longer really supports students on the electronic media they will need in their professional life and when they arrive on the labor market, young people who do not master digital tools inevitably find themselves at odds with the demands of their job. », Details Edouard Bliek, Managing Director of Stedy.
France not the worst student at European level
France is in thirteenth place in terms of illectronism among 16-29 year olds, according to the European Institute of Statistics Eurostat. This puts it far ahead of Romania or Bosnia-Herzegovina, countries which show absent subscribers rates above 40% among young Internet users.
But ultimately not enough to push any crowing: today only 3% of young Croatians and 4% of young Icelanders say they have great difficulty mastering digital tools in their businesses or connecting to public services.
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