To live a full life in the modern world, one must be digitally literate, writes SUMEYSH SRIVASTAVA.

According to the Indian National Statistical Office, a digitally literate person is at least five years old and can navigate the Internet via a web browser, use e-mail, and find, evaluate, and communicate information using social media tools.

The office’s statistics show that while over 55 per cent of Indians have access to broadband, only 20 per cent had the ability to use the Internet.

But the digital divide in India – as elsewhere – exists in different degrees and extends beyond access to technologies and infrastructure. Digital inclusion also depends on the ability to use technologies meaningfully.

Adoption factors

One current theory, the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), suggests three factors motivate people to accept and adopt any technology: perceived usefulness; perceived ease of use; and attitude towards usage.

A 2019 study which focused on the experiences of first-year students at a private university in Malaysia, found a strong correlation between digital literacy and perceptions of tech usability.

People’s degrees of digital literacy varied significantly depending on whether they routinely had access to the Internet. Two distinct yet related concepts, Internet access and digital literacy, are clearly worth comparing.

The Digital in India 2019 report revealed that 99.9 per cent of Internet users in the country use a mobile device to access the web. Age, gender, occupation, geography, caste, and other variables have also been shown to shape the diffusion of technology in India.

But despite these indicators, existing digital literacy initiatives often do not distinguish between the usage patterns and specific conditions of different citizens.

Reinforced learning

Both informal, community-driven education and formal, individualized training must be combined to produce an effective learning process. 2013 research conducted in the USA shows that leveraging spaces like school libraries or community halls as places for informal community learning can reinforce digital literacy programmes and learning outcomes, as well as bypassing individual access issues.

A case study in Pakistan conducted by the Internet Society, similarly, demonstrated how the combination of Internet access and capacity-building initiatives boosted both digital skills and access to educational information for a community of students.

The Public Wi-Fi Access Network Interface scheme, unveiled in India in December 2020, promises to enable anyone to connect to Wi-Fi broadband from any location in the country.

Recommendations

India’s state-run digital literacy programme is one of the largest in the world. Still, there is room for improvement in terms of design, capacity, and implementation.

Digital literacy initiatives need to track different levels of online proficiency, as well as who has access to the Internet. When assessing the influence and effectiveness of such initiatives, factors like age, gender, education, and technology experience should all be taken into account.

The TAM framework would be applicable to any data-gathering project examining how, why, and under what circumstances people choose to connect with technologies.

As many classes continuing online in the aftermath of COVID-19, we need to examine and better understand the implications of digital literacy for access to education. This is especially important in light of how digital skills and literacy may influence students’ interactions with technology in the future.

For India, moreover, the need to improve digital literacy is increasingly urgent with the increasing prevalence of e-governance.

• Srivastava is  Manager, Public Policy, The Quantum Hub
• Adapted from the article ‘Digital literacy for a digital India’ by Sumeysh Srivastava.