Original article ISPreview UK:
The UK telecoms and media regulator, Ofcom, has today published their annual Media Use and Attitudes 2025 report, which among other things has revealed that the proportion of UK adults with home internet access remains plateaued at 94% in 2024. But the majority of adults without internet access at home report a lack of interest in having it.
The full report looks at everything from our interactions and attitudes toward the internet, AI, social media, smartphone use and more – across different groups (age, gender etc.). For example, age and socioeconomic status continue to influence digital exclusion, with 21% of those over 65 having no internet access at home.
The majority of UK adults without internet access at home report lack of interest in having it. Some 81% stated that they see no need to connect online, although over four in ten of those who don’t go online at home have asked someone else to do something for them online (43%). In addition, 76% of those who do not go online at home reported that nothing would prompt them to go online in the next 12 months.
However, some have other reasons for being offline. One in five (21%) non said that it being too complicated was a reason for not being online, higher than the proportion who said cost was a reason (14%) or that they had concerns about being online (14%).
Interestingly, 18% of internet users go online using exclusively Smartphones (mobile broadband). Whilst some adults face challenges with online tasks on mobile devices compared to laptops or PCs, such as completing forms (65% of smartphone users), some 74% of those using only smartphones say they never feel disadvantaged by this.
The Government’s new Digital Inclusion Action Plan is currently attempting to address this problem via a series of “urgent actions” that it hopes will “begin fixing digital exclusion“. The plan includes funding for local initiatives targeted to the most digitally-excluded groups (e.g. the elderly and low-income households) and partnering with inclusion charity Digital Poverty Alliance (DPA) to provide laptops to people who are digitally excluded.
However, it’s often overlooked that not everybody actually wants to go online and nobody should be forced to use the internet, even if this may leave them at a disadvantage. Similarly, digital skills can change with age, as well as disability (the two are often associated). For example, you might be digitally skilled today, but this can go in reverse when you develop a disability (loss of sight, strokes etc.), which makes life a lot more difficult.
The reality is that some people will always require offline support in order to achieve what society asks or expects of us. The full report goes into a lot of other areas too, and we’ve pasted a quick summary of that below.
AI is on the rise – but it’s not trusted by all
We asked people about their attitudes towards AI. While three in ten adults now say they have used AI tools, it is not trusted any more than it was in 2023.
There has been a marked increase in the use of AI tools, like ChatGPT and Microsoft CoPilot, including people using them for work. Half of online 8- to 17-year-olds say they use AI tools, an increase since last year, and they’re often used for learning and/or schoolwork.
Generally, AI tools were being used for limited, specific tasks, with an emphasis on labour-saving. Uses included drafting documents, helping with writing style, or as an intelligent search engine.
Using tech to improve our physical wellbeing
Technology is playing an increasing role in health, fitness and wellbeing, with three-quarters of adults (76%) saying they used the internet for at least one health and wellbeing activity, including relaxing (40%), looking up health symptoms (35%) and healthy eating/nutrition (28%).
One in five teenagers (19%) say they’re following a fitness programme online – an increase from 14% last year. And this increase is driven by younger teens aged between 13 and 15, with their use of these tools increasing to 19% from 11%.
Age isn’t an issue when spotting influencers and ads
Many teenagers continue to be able to recognise paid influencer endorsements. When online 13- to 17-year-olds were shown an Instagram post of American actress Sydney Sweeney holding a Samsung phone, 68% were both confident in their ability to recognise online advertising and subsequently identified this as influencer marketing.
Meanwhile, over-65s are better at recognising advertising on search engines. When shown a Google search, only half of all respondents (51%) were able to identify the top results as sponsored links. But over-65s had a higher success rate than younger age groups, with 59% of them able to recognise sponsored links compared to 37% of 16-24s.
More generally, despite people leading increasingly online lives, adults’ ability to spot advertising online has not seen any long-term improvement.
Scams and fake profiles
When faced with a mock-up of a scam email, a large majority (83%) of adults were able to take action to protect themselves. However, this was a small decline compared to 2023 (86%).
Again, over-65s were savvier in this area, and were more likely to respond appropriately than younger age groups (92% versus 70% of 25-34s).
However, younger adults were better at identifying fake social media profiles. When shown a mock-up of a fake social media profile, three-quarters (76%) of social media users correctly identified the profile as not genuine. People aged 16-24 were more likely to correctly identify the profile as not genuine (86%). This compares to 73% of over-65s and 70% of 45-54s.
Children and smartphone use
Parents reported that very young children are getting their own mobile phone, with one in five (19%) 3-5s and nearly a third (30%) of 6-7s now having their own device. At the same time, social media use among 3-5s has seen a significant increase – driven by a variety of platforms – up from 29% last year to 37%.
Almost all (94%) 8-17s who go online on their phones say that they have at least one restriction imposed on them, either in school or at home. Over half (56%) of children aged 8-17 who use their phones to go online say they are banned from using their smartphones all of the time they are in school. Nine in ten (92%) 8-17s can recall having had at least one lesson at school about online safety. A higher proportion of this group found these lessons “very useful” compared to the year previous (45% vs. 39%).
Digital gender differences
Online activities vary slightly by gender, with more women than men saying they use any social media apps or sites (92% vs 89%). Women were also more likely to send messages or make calls (96% vs 94%), while men were more likely to upload, watch or share live streaming content than women (69% vs 61%).
The top three platforms for women were WhatsApp (85% vs 79%), Facebook (81% vs 74%) and Instagram (63% vs 56%), whereas men were more likely to use YouTube (87% vs 77%), X (35% vs 24%) and LinkedIn (25% vs 18%).
