Current Levels of Internet Skills

Abstract

In chapter 2, we elaborated six types of Internet skills that the general Internet user needs to participate in an online environment. These skills are important because an increasing number of organizations in society are moving their services online and expect that all of their consumers, citizens, workers, and students have sufficient skills to use them. Unfortunately, this assumption is often unfounded. In fact, an insufficient level of Internet skills makes these services unavailable, especially when they are offered as an alternative to traditional offline services. In this chapter, we gather and present empirical evidence on the levels of command that the general Internet user population currently hold concerning the six types of Internet skills. The goal is to identify potential bottlenecks in these skills in order to define specific policies to cope with the shortcomings observed.