Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment he has made of the level of digital skills by age group; and what estimate he has made of the number of people able to access an internet connection by age group.

The Government understands the importance of digital skills and the ability to access the internet in building a world-leading economy that works for everyone.

We work with the Lloyds Consumer Digital Index and Ofcom survey data, which provide estimates of the proportion of people by age group that have all the essential digital skills for life, and their internet connection take-up.

In addition, DCMS funded the 2019 Oxford Internet Survey (OxIS), a large scale survey of internet users, non-users and ex-users, to provide further insights into internet and ICT access and use, attitudes to technology and supporting demographic and geographic information. This highlighted that:

• Internet use has expanded in all age groups, although the increase is small over the past 6 years.

• Almost everyone is online up to about the age of 50. After 50 there is a sharp decline in Internet use of about 2 percentage points per year.

Table 1: Essential Digital Skills for Life by Age Group

Source: Lloyds Bank UK Consumer Digital Index 2019 (https://www.lloydsbank.com/banking-with-us/whats-happening/consumer-digital-index.html)

Table 2: Internet Connection Take up by Age Group

Source: Ofcom Communications Market Report 2019: Market in context - device and service take up -Telecoms (https://www.ofcom.org.uk/research-and-data/multi-sector-research/cmr/interactive-data)