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 Norway?
Relative to other OECD countries, Norway performs well in benefiting from the opportunities of the digital transformation, but it is also exposed to some key risks. Norway is in the top tier of countries when it comes to ICT access and use and simultaneously displays very low inequality of uses of the Internet. In addition, people in Norway have a very high level of digital skills, while the digital skills gap belongs to the lowest in the OECD. Norwegians make prolific use of the various opportunities provided by the Internet in a number of dimensions. 84% of Norwegians make use of e-government services and 37% of Norwegians have engaged in teleworking - the third highest share in the OECD. Compared to other countries, there are few children reporting to have experienced cyberbullying. Nonetheless, the predominance of digital activities in Norway has also generated the highest level of e-waste per person in any OECD country, at 28.5 kg per inhabitant. As a result of the share of workers with computer-based jobs, Norwegians are particularly exposed to the risks of job stress and worries about work outside work time that are associated with working in the digital economy.
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