Digital Skills: Levels and Distribution

This chapter examines the levels and distribution of digital skills across the population, drawing on survey data and task-based performance tests in the Netherlands, supplemented by international evidence from. It shows that while many users report sufficient basic operational skills, substantial weaknesses remain in more complex and consequential areas, including strategic media choice, formal navigation, information evaluation, communication, content creation, and strategic media use. Only a relatively small and highly skilled group appears to fully understand how internet and intelligent media function. Digital skills are also unevenly distributed by age, education, income, employment status, traditional literacy, and social capital, indicating that existing social inequalities are reproduced and amplified in digital environments. The chapter concludes that intelligent media such as AI and IoT do not reduce the need for digital skills but make advanced skills more important, requiring targeted, context-sensitive digital inclusion policies to prevent vulnerable groups from falling further behind.