Good news: more people are getting online

The latest Scottish Household Survey (SHS) results were published last week and its section on digital participation and the use of the internet (page 76) is well worth a look. It covers four key areas:

• Take up of internet and broadband with a focus on how this varies by income and area
• Personal use of the internet – including where and how the internet is accessed – by key demographic factors
• Reasons why adults do not use the internet
• Use of Government and local authority websites to access information and services

The good news is that the overarching indicators are positive and point to a continuing upward trend in home internet access and an upward trend in the number of individuals getting online. It reports on an increasingly diverse range of the methods being used to access the internet with a quite substantial leap from 25% to 30% of people using mobile devices. It also highlights that people who are not online are increasingly likely to be in lower income groups and areas which rank more highly in the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation. The SHS has been a great source of information for us to track participation and we’re really pleased that in the next survey more in-depth questions will be asked about basic online skills. For now, it reinforces that we need to re-double our efforts and gather more people around us to help get people online.