As part of the 4 weeks 4 inclusion, the largest intercompany event promoted by Tim dedicated to the issues of inclusion and diversity, the CEO Luigi gubitosi overturns the agenda of priorities: "Before thinking about infrastructure, let's talk about training".
In the era of digital transition, the battle is no longer against the digital divide due to lack of infrastructure but against a wider “digital fragility”. "We are focusing on this, on digital fragility, which tends to manifest itself in various ways and create uncomfortable situations: when exclusion derives from a lack of connection or a device, it is easily resolved, it is only a matter of money", he underlined the Chief Executive Officer
We need to avoid gaps in skills, it's not just going online but knowing how to interpret it” explained the Administrator. "For this reason, together with Luiss and other institutions, we are joining a project, the Italian Digital Media Observatory, which fights fake news, teaches people to understand the quality of information, while looking for the avant-garde - he concluded - we must make our own the words of Liliana Segre and ensure that no one is left out”.
In addition to the senator, the Minister of Education was also present at the event Patricio Bianchi: "We have to manage to overcome the two pandemics, that of health but also that of individualism, which has not put the ability to include and build the community at the center of collective life".
“School is no longer the place to accumulate knowledge and information, school serves to keep people together and build ever wider communities. Digital is essential in all of this because it allows you to leave your local context by conquering a wider horizon. But there is a need for everyone to be able to do so and the school serves to overcome differences”, concluded the minister.
During the event, the first results of the Censis research carried out in collaboration with the Tim study center were presented, from which it emerges that in Italy digital poverty is not only structural, but also cognitive. So much so that the digital divide appears to be strongly correlated with people's educational attainment.
The majority (58.7%) of people who have difficulty accessing digital are those who, as a qualification, have achieved a maximum of eighth grade. Even if the search Censis/Tim, “The digitization of Italians. Push factors and driving elements”, highlights that a share of people exposed to the digital divide is also present among those with a higher education qualification (15,8%).
The gap, however, is also linked to personal reasons: up to the age of 44, the average digital skills of citizens are such as to be able to meet any need. While between the ages of 45 and 65, 17,1% of citizens go into suffering: almost 3,1 million people of working age. Over the age of 65, then, the problem multiplies and the area of discomfort covers 61,9% of the total: about 8,6 million people. The analysis also shows that "digital skills are strongly influenced by being part of the active population or not". Among the employed, the share of those in difficulty slightly exceeds 5%, but rises to 11,3% among the unemployed and reaches almost half of the inactive (44,6%). The low activity rate of women in Italy (55,2% in total, but below 40% in some southern regions), does not favor digital inclusion.
