Flemish young people are less familiar with digital devices and skills than is expected of them. This is evident from the Digimeter of research center imec, which annually gauges the digital habits of the Flemish people.
Since 2009, the Digimeter has been investigating how many digital devices Flemish people have, what they use, how their digital skills are and how positive or negative they feel about the technology. The study is based on surveys conducted in the autumn of 2022 among 2,300 Flemish people, and on data from the MobileDNA app, which monitors the use of someone’s smartphone in detail.
The research shows that young people have the most positive attitude towards digital technologies. A good 70 percent of 18-34 year olds say they are interested in digital technologies, and 80 percent of them find it easy to handle. Those percentages will decrease by almost 10 percentage points compared to 2021.
At the same time, the results show that the number of 25 to 34-year-olds who do not think they can handle technology well enough at a professional level has risen from 11 to 14 percent. The number of 18 to 24-year-olds who think that new innovations follow too quickly has risen from 30 to 38 percent.
“Young people are often expected to be completely up to date with the new technologies,” says Professor of New Communication Technologies Lieven De Marez (UGent/imec). “But things sometimes go too fast for them too: things like the blockchain or the metaverse are not known to everyone. The myth of the ‘digital native’ seems to have been shattered.”
soft skills
According to De Marez, education has an important role to play. “All students must learn digital skills, not just those students from STEM disciplines. And teachers must also be trained or better supported. With the digital leap, we made a nice step in terms of infrastructure and hard skills, but we also want to increase the support for Don’t forget more soft skills, such as monitoring digital balance,” he says. “It is important that everyone is on board: otherwise a certain group will get the feeling that the technology will run with them, instead of the other way around.”
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