Digital competencies of the people above 55

Usage of internet and modern tools The internet usage of the elderly people is quite low in whole EU. According to the report of the EUROSTAT the 20% of the people between and 2/3 of the people between have never used the internet in the EU. At the same time this rate is only 15% among the youngs between EUROSTAT

„tipping point” (from 2000) In Hungary a very slow increase could have been observed in the last 20 years. From the 1-2% penetration is increased till the present 30% among the people between We cannot say that this is a radical change or it is a trend that the elderly people use the internet. This is the current situation. But at same time we have to mention that from a very low level we reached a quite high which means that the eldelry cannot avoid the phenomenon of the internet. „Tipping point” means a changes of the behavior of a generation. See more at: Gladwell, Malcolm: Fordulópont című könyvében, Malcolm

Speeding in the usage of the internet (55+) In Hungary we can also observe a change period: from the year 2000 the situation became better, so we can treat the year 2000 as a turning point. We call this period (using the American notion) silver surfers. From the year 2000 this generation started to use internet in a higher percentage than the average. This is also true for the other technical devices such as mobile phones. The internet became important as a COMMUNICATION method: the elderly started to use the internet for keeping contact with the outer world, relatives and closer family members, for example grand children About the silver surfers see: Sp08/Baby%20Boomers.pdf

Spreading of the internet and the digital competencies (55+) I. At the same time it is worth mentioing that the dynamics of the spreading of the internet among the Hungarian users denial to the theory of Rogers about the diffusion of the innovations. It measn that we should observe a moderate incerase and after that a dynamic increase and finally a settle. This is called the „S” curve. In the case of Hungary the increase was linear started from 17% in 2001 and reached the 66% till (World Internet Project)World Internet Project Source: Eurostat statistics about Hungary, „Life Online” / agenda/sites/digital-agenda/files/scoreboard_life_online.pdf

Spreading of the internet and the digital competencies (55+) II. Source: Eurostat report about Hungary Magyaroszágról, „Life Online” / agenda/files/scoreboard_life_online.pdf

Tenders for learning Between 2000 and 2013 several domestic and EU projects realised in Hungary that aimed the improvement of the digital competencies of the elderly (55+). As an example we can mention our project as well: Chance, Grundtvig II etc.)

Statements (55+) From the report of Homoki (2006) we would like to empahsis the following: „If the elderly person lives with his/her family specially if he/she has family members under 30 / or has higher degree it facilitates the usage of the digital skills. Independently from the income this motion can be facilitated by the digital equipments of the houshold. The eldelry prefer to use the digital equipments for practical reasons. …” Source: Homoki 2006, 198 old.

Consuming media and usage of digital equipments based on age (%) Source: Digitális írástudás, társadalmi szegmentáltság (Bernát Anikó – Fábián Zoltán) tanulmánya

Domestic and international experiences (55+) According to domestic surveys it can be said that digital literacy can be found among the low educated and low income elderly people. But this is not a Hungarian phenomenon, it can be observed in other countries. Dutton at all (2006) by using the international data of the World Internet Project came to the conclusion that „ significant number of the young generation became users in comparsion with the elderly generation” (Dutton–Shapherd–Di Gennaro 2006: 218). As we think it is important to underdstand the motivation for using the internet and this is especially true for the problematic groups such as elderly people. It would be advisable to make the elderly how they can use the internet and for what purposes. „For this it is neccesary to enlarge the possibilites for the elderly to have guided access to the internet.”

Digital tools and the disabled (statements) Among the disabled people in Hungary high percentage of digital literacy can be found. It is hard to find exact data since we have to treat the different kind of handicaps: 1. mental handicap (the digital literacy is about 100%), 2. physical handicap (no separate data are available), 3. hearing or visual handicap, deaf-mute (there are several tenders for them to use digital equipments and several courses can also be found. The more handicap they have the higher the chances they can take part in sponsored projects how to use the digital equipments for their every day life. The government also put emphasis to make the social and official websites „clean” without obstacles. In Hungary on the public channels and official events sign interpreter must be used and more and more TV channels are available with subtitle.