Elderly and low-income families: 7 million citizens totally excluded from digital. Here is why

Digital can enable citizens to access services and to do so quickly. But this tool does not always reach all sections of the population. Some are left out. "The digital transformation in Italy and Europe," reads a report by Eurispes, "is changing our way of living, thinking and relating day after day. To address this challenge, the EU has developed - through the Programme for the Digital Decade 2030 - a strategy that aims to create a just, inclusive, sustainable and resilient digital society'.

"The main objectives of the programme focus on four key areas: digital human capital, secure and sustainable infrastructure, the digitisation of businesses, and the modernisation of public services. Italy has made these objectives its own through instruments such as the NRP, which envisages investments in connectivity, 5G, digitisation of the public administration, simplification of services, and enhancement of digital skills. Reforms have also been initiated in the educational sphere to include digital education in school curricula. However, this collective action is still very unbalanced towards the technological aspect, leaving the protection of the individual in the background,' it is highlighted.

In Italy, the demographic context is characterised by an average age of 47.9 years, among the highest in Europe, with an over-65 population that is almost a quarter of the total. This figure affects the structure of digital citizenship, creating considerable gaps. The increase in access to the Net has not been matched by an improvement in the quality of use and the capacity for inclusion. 87.7 per cent of the population (51.6 million people) are connected to the Internet in 2024, but more than 7 million citizens are completely excluded, especially among the elderly, suburbs, inland areas and low-income households. Almost all users use a smartphone as their main device, slightly more than half also use a PC, but access to complex services such as SPID or CIE is low. Young people spend on average more than 2 hours and 20 minutes a day on social media, only 18% say they use the Internet for educational activities or civic participation: this gap between digital consumption and critical use reveals a structural fragility in digital skills. "Italy has passed the milestone of basic digitalisation," the survey stresses. The real challenge now is to move on to qualitative use'.

According to the Eurobarometer 2025 Report, only 43% of Italian citizens interacted with the public administration through digital services in the last year, compared to an EU average of 61%. This figure does not so much reflect a lack of infrastructure, but a series of cultural, technical and organisational factors that limit the full use of digital services, even when they are available.

In recent years, Italy has made significant progress by adopting key tools such as SPID, CIE, the IO App, pagoPA and the Electronic Health Record. According to AGID (2024), more than 36 million citizens have active SPID credentials, but the rate of use is irregular: only 37 per cent of holders use SPID regularly to access PA services. One of the main critical issues is the poor interoperability of public information systems. From the users' perspective, the main problem is not so much access, but rather the perceived effectiveness of digital services.