There is a belief that younger people are fully engaged in the digital world.
Instead, some young people have very low levels of data literacy.
This could not be further from the truth.
Building on ourprevious research, we have divided digital technology users of all ages into five groups.
These are extensive political, extensive, general, limited, and social and media users.
General users have a moderate level of online engagement, but dont tend to use social media.
Limited users have a low probability of engaging with any digital systems.
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They sound like your archetypal digital natives.
By contrast, the two extensive groups also contain young people, aged between 16 and 25.
Understanding data
Our projecthas highlighted three key areas of data literacy.
These are data thinking, data doing, and data participation.
Data thinking covers critical skills being able to assess and check data in the online environment.
Data doing focuses on practical skills involving data handling and data management.
Or it might involve identifying reliable data from the internet that will help you in your everyday life.
Data participation covers our shared experience of digital society.
Limited users are much older post-retirement and are likely to have very few if any school qualifications.
Compared to other groups, they had the lowest levels of concern about how online platforms operate.
This compares to figures of 5% and 25% for the general users group.
They are often lower-skilled and in lower-income work or unemployed.
They are likely to be in social housing of some form and may be living at home with parents.
They are likely to come from some of the poorest households in the country.
