Usage Gap

The usage gap is what comes after getting online: being able to do what you need, and to judge what you see.

In the UK, 15% of adults can't independently do all the basic tasks needed to get online, around 4 million lack the digital skills needed for everyday life, and nearly 1 in 5 adults in the workforce lack the digital skills needed for work.1 Across the EU, 40% of people aged 16–74 lack basic digital skills; among 65–74-year-olds, only a third have them.2

Using it and judging it are different skills. Four in ten UK adults say they've come across misinformation, fewer than half feel confident judging whether a source is truthful, and only 30% feel able to tell whether an image, audio clip, or video was made by AI.3

The gaps are widest for older people, people with less formal education, and people in lower-paid work. Language matters too: much of what people need online exists in only a few major languages.

This is the gap our training works on most directly: the practical skills, and the critical ones that go with them.

Sources

  1. Lloyds Banking Group and Ipsos, Essential Digital Skills 2025. ↩︎
  2. Eurostat, Skills for the digital age (2025 data). ↩︎
  3. Ofcom, Four in 10 UK adults encounter misinformation (November 2024). ↩︎