What this means to me and a new context
For me, coming into a new job in Social Impact at Nominet a year ago, I hit the ground running supporting the inaugural launch of the Nominet Digital Youth Index. As I peeled back layers in analysing the research, I was increasingly excited by the evidence base and insights. Finding out that half of young people were teaching themselves digital skills, that those who most rely on the internet for support are those most likely to face harm, and that 94% young people perceive themselves to be safe online helped frame my thoughts around the priorities of social impact and about the human stories behind the statistics. What I love is that the index goes beyond questions of infrastructure like what devices you have, to drill down into behaviours, attitudes, relationships and situations. In other words: those dimensions where technology meets human behaviour and reality.
While our first year sat firmly in the post pandemic context, as young people grappled with digital changes to their education, work and socialisation; this year we are noticing new emergent themes and questions. How does the rising cost of living affect young people in their digital lives? How do we stay safe online and enable everyone to harness the opportunities digital technology brings? How can we level up, growing the UK’s digital talent pool and increase digital skills for all young people?
Acting on your feedback
From being quoted in UK Parliament on the day of launch, to influencing strategy and policy, we have received great feedback from audiences of the data. We have heard that in complement to our report and data snapshots, there is value in the interactive data dashboard which invites you to drive yourself to inform and focus further research, enable programme and service design, inform policy discussions and support evaluations.
We have listened to feedback to improve our approach this year, so you can expect some exciting changes. These include:
- Doubling our sample size from 2,000 to 4,000 8-25 year olds
- Improving our methodology for reaching young people who are “offline” or face barriers to completing online surveys
- Introducing a Youth Panel alongside our expert Advisory Panel to deepen our understanding and analysis
- Qualitative interviews with young people, parents, carers and professions set up to react to findings (compared to last year where the qualitative research helped determine the quantitative questions)
- Integrating your feedback into our surveys and platform
We are also making stronger links with existing, complimentary research initiatives which we can’t wait to share more on soon.
What’s next?
We’re keen to hear from you – have you used the Index? What would you expect to see this year? Let us know what will make this year even more valuable to you.
Please save the date for our launch event on 17th October and expect more content from us in the coming weeks on this page as we gear up for launch and share some of the insights and findings with you.
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