How's Life in the Digital Age?
Opportunities and Risks of the Digital Transformation for People's Well-being
This report documents how the ongoing digital transformation is affecting people’s lives across the 11 key dimensions that make up the How’s Life? Well-being Framework (Income and wealth, Jobs and earnings, Housing, Health status, Education and skills, Work-life balance, Civic engagement and governance, Social connections, Environmental quality, Personal security, and Subjective well-being). A summary of existing studies highlights 39 key impacts of the digital transformation on people’s well-being. The review shows that these impacts can be positive as digital technologies expand the boundaries of information availability and enhance human productivity, but can also imply risks for people’s well-being, ranging from cyber-bullying to the emergence of disinformation or cyber-hacking. In sum, making digitalisation work for people’s well-being would require building equal digital opportunities, widespread digital literacy and strong digital security. Continued research and efforts in improving statistical frameworks will be needed to expand our knowledge on the many topics covered in this report.
How's life in the digital age in Iceland?
Overall, Iceland is a country that benefits highly from the opportunities provided by the internet while having only average exposure to the risks. Iceland ranks third among OECD countries in Internet access and first in Internet use. The country ranks first in the use of online social networking sites, and it ranks second in the expression of political opinions online, the selling of goods and services using the Internet, and the use of e-government services. Because of high levels of Internet access, the associated life satisfaction gains are very high compared to other countries. Despite the high use of internet in Iceland, the share of children using the Internet more than 6 hours on a weekend day is lower than the OECD average and the share of children experiencing cyberbullying in Iceland is among the lowest in the OECD. However, people in Iceland do sometimes feel limited by their ICT skills, with almost 30% of the teachers reporting a high need to develop ICT skills for teaching, and 8.4% of the population report lacking skills to access e-government services.
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