Listening to young people: Gearing up for this year’s Nominet Digital Youth Index

More than ever, young people are facing the unprecedented impact of the digital revolution on their lives. They face a society where the opportunities are game changing, but not equally distributed. When working on contemporary digital issues impacting young people, the single most important place to start by listening to the issues that concern them directly. This is why the Nominet Digital Youth Index exists.

Our free-to-use national, annual benchmarking research sets out to identify and monitor the key drivers, issues and opportunities in young people’s relationship with digital technology across the UK in their own words.

Now in its second year, the Index is the first nationwide survey of its kind and has been used widely by policy makers and civil society organisations. With our research partner Opinium we’re already unearthed fascinating new findings and our year-on-year commitment means we’re only set to gain more insight.

While our first year sat firmly in the post pandemic reality, 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?

There are also important questions about growing the UK’s digital talent pool and insights that would help increase digital skills for al young people.

The Digital Youth Index is already making waves – from being quoted in parliament on the day of launch, to influencing strategy and policy – we have received detailed feedback from audiences that are regularly using our data.

Thanks to this feedback, we have made an number of changes to our approach in year two, so users can expect some exciting changes, which include:

We have listened to feedback to improve our approach this year, so you can expect some exciting changes

• 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)

Year two of the Nominet Digital Youth Index launches on Monday, 17^th October 2022 with a virtual event live from Manchester to hear about our insights and findings, as well as the opportunity to hear from some of our key partners and leading young voices.  Sign up here.