Socioeconomic inequalities and digital skills

This article discusses the links between socioeconomic inequalities and digital skills, understood here as the digital abilities, competences, and knowledge critical to participate fully in contemporary societies. The article starts by discussing what digital skills are and how they have been conceptualized in the literature. The article then describes digital skills' roles in shaping and being shaped by socioeconomic inequalities such as age; gender; education; race, ethnicity, and sensorial disabilities-based disparities; and material access to the internet. Afterward, a summary of the evidence concerning how digital skills mediate the impact of structural disparities in tangible outcomes is presented, describing issues such as educational and occupational outcomes, subjective well-being, capital-enhancing consequences of internet use, and online safety and privacy. Finally, the article summarizes the key findings and outlines directions for future research on digital skills and socioeconomic inequalities, signaling the need to improve the measurement of digital skills and the scarce assessment of which policies work to foster and democratize them.