How’s Life in the Digital Age? is the first topical report in the new How’s Life? monograph series. How’s Life? is the flagship publication of the OECD Better Life Initiative, which aims to promote “Better Policies for Better Lives”, in line with the OECD’s overarching mission. While the main How’s Life? report is released every two years, a series of shorter monographs focusing on specific issues will now be published on a regular basis. How’s Life in the Digital Age? documents how the ongoing digital transformation is affecting people’s lives, based on the multi-dimensional framework used in How’s Life? to monitor progress in the key dimensions of people’s well-being. This report is also an input to the OECD Going Digital Initiative, which aims to describe the many facets of the digital transformation throughout a series of publications.

How does the digital transformation affect people’s lives and well-being? Digital technologies have radically changed the way people work, consume and communicate over a short period of time. It is necessary that statistics help understand the rapid transformation that is at stake. This first monograph of the How’s Life? series aims to meet this need, providing a comprehensive description of digital impacts on people’s life and underlining some important data gaps.

How does the digital transformation affect people’s life and well-being? With the Going Digital Project, the OECD has undertaken a large number of studies in order to better understand the impacts of the digital transformation on the economy and society and to derive policy recommendations. This chapter summarises the main digital issues at stake and lists the available indicators that reflect both positive and negative impacts of the digital transformation. It uses the OECD well-being framework as a tool to analyse the various impacts of the digital transformation on people’s lives.

This chapter provides a comprehensive review of the literature on the well-being impact of the digital transformation using the lens of the How’s Life? well-being framework. For each dimension of well-being and the additional dimension of ICT access and use, the key impacts of the digital transformation are discussed and illustrated with the help of available indicators, distinguishing between opportunities and risks triggered by digital technologies. For almost all dimensions of well-being, the chapter identifies both positive and negative effects, suggesting that the digital transformation often has an ambiguous influence on people’s well-being.

This chapter combines the indicators presented in the previous chapter into two synthetic indices of digital risks and digital opportunities. These indices are found to be non-correlated with each other, implying that increased digital opportunities are not necessarily associated to higher digital risks. Digital opportunities are found to be highly correlated with access to ICT, which suggests that providing broad access is a necessary but not a sufficient condition to create opportunities. While digital risks are diverse in nature, the prevalence of digital security incidents is a powerful predictor of other digital risks, as countries’ digital maturity and digital strategies can reduce all digital risks while increasing digital security. As analysis based on available indicators is limited due to the lack of harmonised data, this chapter also discuss the statistical agenda going forward.