Attitude towards digitization
What the Germans think
Examining current 2019 insights into Germans’ attitude towards digitization — nationwide, across varying cohorts, compared with other European countries and beyond — and what that means for you. The bottom line: They are neither across-the-board for nor against, and it depends.
Programmers become programmers because they want to venture into creating digital applications and believe this is where the world is headed. If it were a one hit wonder, they wouldn’t invest time and energy into it. Over the last two decades, time seems to have proven tech is here to stay. The world as a whole has prospered through technological progress. Yet, the degree to which the general population adopts and welcomes it varies.
In late May, the TechRadar 2019, a follow up to TechRadar 2018, was published. This is a study commissioned by German Academy of Science and Engineering acatech and the nonprofit Körber Foundation shedding light on the German population’s views on digitization. It builds on data from a nationwide representative survey taking place every two years on changing topics. In 2018 this topic was digitization. The 2019 TechnikRadar investigated the 2018 findings further on the age and gender scale, as well as put them into an international context with other studies from the likes of the European Commission and others. We spare you the 60+ pages read and tell you what you need to know.
The findings of the study have implications on two different aspects: personal digital competency as an influencer of optimistic attitude towards digitization on one hand and exigencies to the design of digital products and services to be taken into consideration for general acceptability and adoption on the other.
Factors influencing individual digitization attitude
There are quite a few factors which influence how the individual person views digitization and its future development. Up and foremost is the individual perceived capability of coping with the changes from digitization. Will I be a winner or a loser in this change? Naturally, the more I assume to gain from something, the more positively I will view it.
The logical reaction to thinking one were to lose out from digitization would be to see to prepare themselves more, thus improving these capabilities and bringing themselves onto the winning side. However, resignation and opposition are the more common reactions.
Perceived capability or competency comes from exposure. Integration into the workforce plays an important role. Whereas, not having had much practice, makes for a lack of understanding, thus distrust. As the metaphorical German saying goes: “Was der Bauer nicht kennt, das frisst er nicht” (Farmers don’t eat anything they don’t know).
A second factor is found in the contrasting self-determination versus risk scale. I like what I can influence and I dislike being at somebody else’s mercy. Trust in institutions — administrations, agencies, and corporations — best exemplifies this factor. People expect trustworthy institutions to regulate and govern new developments in such a way that they are safe and in line with the values of their society. Who is seen in charge of setting the right regulations for the digital future, corporations or the government? This varies depending on the issue and purpose of the particular technology. Service providers foremost are required to fulfill expectations, while official institutions are required to enforce data protection.
Expectations towards digitization play about in three key areas: economy, own life, and society. As such, threats associated with digitization mentioned by even the most optimistic are: job loss, liability to interference of the infrastructure, and loss of control over own data. Interestingly, the latter is more commonly expressed by people with a positive attitude towards digitization. Opportunities are expected from increased comfort in life and boosts to the economy.
Attitude development
Any attitude doesn’t just come out of nowhere. It is founded on the individual vita. Age and gender are characteristics demonstrating different viewpoints on digitization: women, especially if older and not having been employed, are more hesitant than men, older people more so than younger ones. With respect to women, there was an East-West distinction among the older generations, probably stemming from the fact that more women took part in the workforce in East Germany during the divided years. Besides merely describing to date attitude facts, the TechnikRadar study also investigates why that is — and in an afterthought if there is an improvement to be expected over time as digital natives mature.
How was digitalization experienced in the past? What zeitgeist and own experiences shaped cohorts of different generations? The 1960s were characterized by big events. Tada, the moon landing whose 50th anniversary is dominating the news cycle these past few days. People were fascinated but there was no advanced technology in the personal sphere. The 1970s saw computers enter production facilities. The fear for employment started to circulate. In the 1980s computers became common place in bureaucracy. This caused fear of surveillance, but was countered with data protection regulations. In this decade, personal computers started to become part of everyday life. The 1990s were the internet decade and with it came a reversal of control. For the first time, people felt the individual can stand up to the big guys.
And then we entered the 2000s. From personal computers at home, we cultivated the first digital natives who have an air of ease at picking up digital devices and applications. On the other end of the spectrum, the now internet behemoths as well as homeland security escalated data collection. The fear of surveillance looms anew. And with industry 4.0, there’s the fear for employment again. It’s been a complicated two decades. Some of the main topics defining the current discourse about future scenarios are smart homes, geriatric care robotics, online health care data sharing, surgery robotics, and autonomous driving.
The German opinion in 2019 and in international comparison
In conclusions, Germans as a whole are on the fence about digitization. Some optimistic, others equally as much pessimistic.
International comparability is a bit skewed due to different studies having different methodologies in sample drawing, and phrasing of questions across different languages. We don’t want to go into the methodology of each international survey, but at least want you to take any findings with a grain of salt where the approval of digitization might be overstated. For example, a survey conducted online by default excludes the part of the population without online access, or some samples only include adults up to a certain age 50, 60 or 65. In particular, this was the case for studies outside of Europe, in China or India for example.
Now, which countries are more and which are less open to embrace digitization? We see a clear North-South divide on most topics. As mentioned, the perceived own digital competency is a big factor in the attitude towards digitization, this includes the ability to beneficially use digital services, problem solving ability and learning capability of advanced future applications. Germany here is quite in the middle with 73%, while the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark radiate the most confidence and Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece and Romania the least. The level of educational background certainly plays a role in technology understanding. Looking even more internationally, in China according to surveys, digitization is viewed more positively than in the mean of Europe and the US. However as said, the validity underlies a distinct age bias from lack of representation of older people in these surveys.
On the question of the threat of job losses, Germany is in the European mean while Southern and Eastern countries are more worried. This is probably in part a question of the nature of the jobs currently predominating in the workforce. A certain bias about the own job of the surveyed is noticeable, whose tasks are well known and considered less replaceable by technology. Germans anticipate an economic boost more than the European mean. On the question who should regulate, a study of the European Commission interestingly concludes Germans want corporations to be the regulating organ. However, to us it’s not clear if the question phrasing may have been misunderstood into demanding corporations to uphold more regulations, instead of expecting them to be the institutions framing regulations.
Now, we take a closer look at the main topics defining the current discourse. Robotics in geriatric care experiences resistance as care of the elderly also has a social component. The view on surgery robotics is based on the quality rating of robots. In a lot of fields of applications robots are more accurate than the human hand.
The broad topic of online health care, which other than the two above would apply to everybody already now and not just in the future, receives the least approval rating. 92% of Germans don’t want to use it, the highest reluctance in all of Europe. The better provided access to medical care, the less likely one probably is to online research themselves. Another factor is how likely one believes to be able to understand their search results. For some people, a visit to the doctor has also a social component. What gives reason to muse is that even anonymously, few people are inclined to allow passing on medical information for R&D purposes which would benefit society as a whole. In this instance, the underlying economics are ignored. More available data can reduce R&D cost, therewith price for medication.
In autonomous driving, the last hotly debated topic, only 18% of Germans have confidence in its reliability. The European mean is 22%. Many expect computer failure could result in traffic chaos and regard hacker attacks as a threat. There also is a strong distrust in personal data collection, although the same already occurs with existing ride hailing apps. At this point, people still like to drive themselves and since initially autonomous cars will share the road with human drivers, the degree to which other people are perceived to obey traffic rules, probably plays a part.
Can the generation gap be bridged?
We come to the last part of this review. Each person is different. There are noticeable correlations between tech affinity and sociodemographic characteristics. Age in combination with gender have the most explanatory power. To a much lesser intent characteristics matter like educational background, type of last employment, financial situation, self-attribution based to higher or lower class, residence in East or West Germany, by federal state, living in a metropolis or village, household size, and values.
The why a certain attitude came about is not part of many surveys. Focus groups help to understand the causes in circumstances, requirements, competence and resources which vary in the course of life and may explain why older people are more analog. Besides cohort and age effects, we also have period effects. The implementation of digital technology happened at different times of people’s lives.
The young, mid 20s to 30s, men and women are digital natives, those who started using technology relatively early in their lives. Applications may vary, but both genders are equally digitally competent. The push to use digital devices usually came from the outside. Education or work required it and there is a coolness factor to being current. Now, the use digital devices constantly and many streamlining tools are considered without alternatives in their fast paced life as the offline competence in contrast is lower. Social media is a big part of the social life. Risks are seen, but considered part of the general risks associated with participating in life.
Among older generations, the mid 50s to 60s non-digital natives, we need to distinguish between men and women. The men of this group are digitally competent to an extent. Many were pushed to use technology first by their job, later also personally for needing to stay informed and communicate. After the status passage of entering retirement, there was less push and suddenly the factor time became widely available while physical abilities slowly decrease. Participating digitally was now optional but also a bit more difficult. Complexities, handling — not only due to lacking competence — and security risks keep these men away from digital technology, though.
Many women of the same age group are much more tech resistant. Often, they still use old and limited devices which they only use sporadically with little push to expand their digital use. Most is still possible to do offline. Without practice, online transactions usually take longer, therefore digital tools are less help and more burden. They also have a preference for the social aspects of life which for them takes place in person, not on social media. More than the men, they demand better security and devices adjusted to their aptitudes in order to start considering to switch.
It’s these two topics which keep older people from going digital: ability and security. It is up for debate if it is indeed necessary to remain digitally connected in older ages. As cost and competition increases for many businesses, most will expand their digital strategies. It would mean disadvantages to non-digitals up to social exclusion. Even if one doesn’t need to do everything online, it still is important to know, understand, use, and protect their digital affairs.
Usability matching their needs becomes an issue: feel and vision. The logic of digital solutions are often difficult to understand for them which are too rigid, not intuitive for non-digital natives, and error intolerant, e.g. mistypes. Data protection and data security are issues concerning politics, banking, and online shopping for example. These are relevant findings for anyone in the business of creating, designing, or selling digital services. Include older generations by adapting to their needs.
