Digital inclusion and well-being

Douglas White, Carnegie UK Trust, Fife, United Kingdom, Douglas@carnegieuk.org

PUBLISHED ON: 28 May 2020

This commentary is part of Digital inclusion and data literacy, a special issue of Internet Policy Review guest-edited by Elinor Carmi and Simeon J. Yates.

At the Carnegie UK Trust, a charitable foundation based in Scotland and operating across the UK and Ireland, we have been working for more than 100 years to improve well-being for individuals, community and society.

Our founding deed, set by the Scottish-American philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, gave our organisation the mandate to reinterpret our broad mission over the passage of time, to respond accordingly to the most pressing issues of the day. In 2020, it is inevitable that any intervention on policy or practice designed to improve well-being should include a consideration of the role and effect of digital technology.

The impact of technology on all aspects of our individual lives, society and the economy during the past thirty years is well-documented. The benefits for many people have been substantial, but there are also significant challenges. The current COVID-19 crisis is bringing both the upsides and the downsides to the fore.

Through our ‘Digital Futures’ programme at Carnegie we can identify a number of clear themes on the relationship between digital inclusion and different aspects of well-being.

  1. Digital inclusion is changing. As digital becomes ever more central to how we live our daily lives, the range of benefits that we might wish to maximise from our engagement with technology; and the range of risks that we need to be aware of and mitigate, rapidly grows. It is very unlikely that any one of us is making use of digital to its full potential, while also doing all that we possibly can to minimise the associated risks of digital engagement. In the past, there has been a perceived dichotomy between those who are ‘digitally included’ and those who are not. Today, it makes much more sense to think of digital inclusion as a spectrum – or a series of spectrums – upon which we each have our own individual place. We may be skilled in some areas, less so in others. To paraphrase a well-known quote from Joe Kraus, the founder of Excite, we might think of digital inclusion as previously consisting of dozens of markets of millions of citizens; whereas now, it is millions of markets of dozens.
  2. The key question for public policy and practice is to determine when and where it should intervene in this arena. To do this, we need to ask, who could benefit the most from being more digitally included; and who risks experiencing the greatest harm from the nature of, or lack of, digital engagement that they currently have?
  3. Within this context, it is important to give due attention to groups who many may not realise have digital inclusion needs. At Carnegie, our #NotWithoutMe project has worked over a number of years with organisations across the UK who are supporting at risk children and young people to develop their digital skills. There has often been a tendency to regard those in these age groups as ‘digital natives’, for whom digital skills are somehow inherent. This is far from the case, and indeed the consequences of not being able to maximise the benefits of technology – and being exposed to the harms that it can bring – can be particularly significant for young people. Two key points of learning from this work are that even our self-perceptions of our levels of digital understanding can be misleading; and that a sustained improvement in digital inclusion in any cohort is only likely to be achieved if the digital skills of support networks are also invested in.
  4. More broadly, it is imperative that we recognise that there remains a clear social justice dimension in access to and use of digital technology. There is substantial evidence which demonstrates that those most likely to be disadvantaged digitally are also more likely to be disadvantaged according to a range of social or economic measures. What does this digital disadvantage look like? It may encompass lack of connectivity; no access to an appropriate device, or not enough devices; reliance on less flexible or more expensive payment models; limited or narrow digital engagement; or greater risk of exposure to different types of harm online. In this context, there is a significant risk that technology is deepening existing inequalities in society. This contrasts with a commonly held public perception about the internet-age, where digital technology has often been regarded as a route to breaking down traditional hierarchies, barriers and divides. The evidence of the digital divide has perhaps never been so stark as it is just now, with the lockdowns in place to tackle COVID-19, exposing the importance of digital inclusion and the need to urgently tackle significant digital inequalities.
  5. There are a range of well-honed approaches to supporting improved digital inclusion. Networks are often vitally important – people learning from and supporting each other. The current crisis presents new challenges to this mode of learning. Focusing on personal hooks, identity and connections is another well-established approach. Recognising that barriers to improved digital inclusion, and the vulnerabilities that people experience, are multi-layered is essential.
  6. The divide between the ‘digital world’ and the ‘offline world’ is increasingly blurry, with many people simultaneously engaging with a wide range of activities and services online and offline. It is important that any discussion of digital inclusion avoids false dichotomies and supports action that enables people to effectively navigate their digital and physical lives so that each enhances the other and improves well-being. Once again, the COVID-19 crisis has made this consideration an even more pressing, live issue that will need serious consideration and action over the coming weeks and months.
  7. Advancing digital inclusion requires, more than ever, a focus on much more than individual access, skills, confidence and motivation – as critical as these factors are. Much of the growth of the digital sphere during the past 30 years has been driven by private enterprise. Until recently, it has felt like the burden for working out how to engage with digital markets and platforms in a safe and effective way has predominantly fallen on individuals. In recent years however, there has been a growing recognition of some of the challenges and risks associated with the way in which these systems have developed; and an understanding that a much wider range of public policy interventions are likely to be required to ensure that digital can deliver positive well-being outcomes for all citizens. It has also become increasingly apparent that the asymmetric power dynamic between large, global providers and individual citizens makes it difficult to organise a common user interest. In this context, coordinated public policy action at a system level, to ensure that digital inclusion really does deliver well-being benefits, is particularly important.
  8. The significance of public services to supporting well-being is well-understood. Digital technology has presented new opportunities to reimagine the way in which these services are designed and delivered, to become faster, more convenient, more flexible and more responsive. Services which are predominantly transactional in nature have been more advanced in their roll out, but highly effective, responsive, relational digital public services have – unsurprisingly – been slower to emerge. The future of digital inclusion may increasingly look at our ability to design, deliver and engage with such relational services. Again, the COVID-19 crisis has highlighted the value of these type of services – and perhaps may lead to an acceleration of progress towards this type of digital public service development.
  9. Another issue which has received much attention during the current crisis is the question of data and how this is used, stored and shared for public good. While a key focus has obviously been on the role that data might play in helping to tackle COVID-19, much of the discussion that underpins this debate is our common understanding of how data is captured and processed. If data is to become even more important in the years to come, it is essential that improved understanding is at the heart of digital inclusion.
  10. If digital inclusion is to help deliver truly transformative well-being benefits then we need high quality, robust evidence to support these outcomes. This type of evidence is not necessarily straightforward to capture. This may be partly as it is often still too soon for longitudinal benefits – or downsides – of digital services, to be assessed, but also because isolating the positive effects of any digital intervention from other factors is not easy. However, if digital inclusion is to prove its worth in the COVID-19 and post COVID-19 world, then it will be essential to give proper attention to measuring and understanding its value, and to iterating and adapting interventions based on this evidence.
  11. Finally, when reflecting on the relationship between digital inclusion and well-being, we must be cognisant of the fact that change in the digital sphere is rapid and constant. The issues where we need to take action to maximise benefit and mitigate risk can emerge quickly and require policy and practice to pivot accordingly. Our understanding of digital inclusion has developed considerably over time and we should expect this pace to quicken further in the years ahead.

Digital technology had already become fundamental to our individual, community and societal well-being, long before the COVID-19 crisis. The crisis, and the immediate and long-term response to it will extend this even further and more rapidly. Action on digital inclusion - so that everyone can enjoy equally the advantages that technology brings and be protected from harm that it can facilitate - has arguably never been more important and urgent.

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