The Digital Agency has introduced in the 2019 edition of the Barometer (as in 2018) a series of questions that aim to better understand how the French cope with the difficulties they encounter when using computer and digital tools.
Family and friends, the main source of help in case of difficulties in using digital tools
Responses to the question "When you encounter a difficulty using computer and digital tools: what do you do?" highlight a wide range of behaviors.
First of all, there is a form of symmetry at both ends of the spectrum: 8% of respondents say they never encounter difficulties, while 5% give up as soon as they encounter a difficulty (11% of respondents never use computer and digital tools).
In case of difficulties with the use of digital tools, 42% seek help. 35% seek help from family and friends, 2% from work colleagues, 4% from other actors (computer equipment vendors, in particular) and only 1% from a professional or a volunteer in a public Internet access place (public digital or multimedia space, media library...).
Following the Credoc analysts, we can break down the population into four groups:
- The " autonomous" people (39%): they declare that they never encounter difficulties (8%) or declare that they manage on their own (31%).
- People who seek help (42%): the vast majority from their family and friends
- People who give up as soon as they encounter a difficulty (5%)
- Non-users (11%)
The feeling of autonomy increases with the level of education...
The higher the level of education, the more individuals interviewed said they were managing on their own or had no problems.
Références :
The proportion of independent users reaches 48% among bachelor's degree holders and 49% among college graduates. "It is likely that higher education graduates have benefited from a better introduction and training to computers during their initial studies and that people with higher incomes are more likely to be confronted with computer tools on a daily basis in their work, which induces either prior training during their studies or learning during their professional career.
And decreases with age
The proportion of autonomous users (who manage on their own or do not encounter difficulties) decreases steadily with age: from 66% among 18- 24 year olds, 56% among 25- 39 year olds, 41% among 40- 59 year olds, 24% among 60- 69 year olds, 15% among 70 year olds and over. (The gaps even widened between the 2018 and 2019 editions of the Barometer).
Symmetrically, the propensity to ask for help from family and friends or colleagues increases with age: it rises from 25% in the 18-24 age group to 44% in the over-40 age group, 47% in the 60-69 age group, but drops to 34% in the over-70 age group.
Men more autonomous?
While the population of Internet users is made up of as many men as women, men more often claim to be able to manage alone (38%) than women (25%). They are more likely to say they do not encounter any difficulties (12%) than women (7%).
Symmetrically, women are more likely (45%) than men (28%) to seek help from friends and colleagues.
The question of "gender effects" in the relationship between men and women in the digital world has been at the heart of research on digital uses and skills for the past 15 years. Numerous studies have highlighted the fact that women are less confident in their digital skills.
The Capacity survey conducted in 2017 had highlighted particularly strong differences between men and women in their perceived digital skills. "The skills score, compiling the answers given to all the questions on the different types of skills (operational, informal, social, creative and mobile) showed differences according to gender: a particularly marked gap for the lowest level, where there are many more women, and the highest score, which instead has many more men."
These gender differences in perceived skills are found in most surveys that attempt to assess the digital skills of Internet users. One of the traditional explanations for the gender gap among adolescents is that boys develop more digital skills than girls because they spend more time on computers.
A sense of autonomy that varies by profession
The proportion of independent users is the same for people with low and high incomes: 40%.
However, the differences are greater depending on the occupation. The proportion of autonomous users reaches 57% among intermediate professions, 42% among employees and 42% among workers. It decreases significantly among the "inactive": homemakers (28%) and retirees (19%).
The self-employed, employees and middle occupations, as well as homemakers, have higher than average levels of use of relatives (35%).
"The more digital uses we have, the more trouble we get into"
Contrary to some popular belief, digital difficulties are not just for the elderly or the poorest households.
We can no longer be satisfied with categorizing the "excluded" or the " prevented" from using digital technology solely on the basis of age, diploma or social category. Contrary to some preconceived ideas, digital difficulties do not only concern the elderly or the poorest households.
Senior citizens can be perfectly socialized but not very attracted by digital technology or, on the contrary, socially and geographically isolated but active on the networks; women raising their children alone can find in digital technology an opportunity to avoid becoming unsocialized or, on the contrary, experience it as an additional constraint in an already exhausting life.
TheCapacity survey had also shown that, somewhat paradoxically, "the more digital uses we have, the more problems we have ... Clearly, when some people are content to go on Google and transfer photos to friends and family, they have few problems with the Internet," observes Jean-François Marchandise, general delegate of the FING (Fondation Internet Nouvelle Génération). "It's when you have several dozen different uses - which is the case for the average Internet user - that problems appear. We lose documents, we don't know how to publish and unpublish messages on certain sites, we are sometimes anxious about certain actions on a banking application or when processing our taxes... These new digital embarrassments concern people who are already connected. The more digital uses the French have not chosen, the more trouble they have".
