In the past five decades, the global literacy rate among adults has grown from 67 percent in 1976 to 87.36 percent in 2023. In 1976, males had a literacy rate of 76 percent, compared to a rate of 58 percent among females. This difference of over 17 percent in 1976 has fallen to just seven percent in 2020. Although gaps in literacy rates have fallen across all regions in recent decades, significant disparities remain across much of South Asia and Africa, while the difference is below one percent in Europe and the Americas. Reasons for these differences are rooted in economic and cultural differences across the globe. In poorer societies, families with limited means are often more likely to invest in their sons' education, while their daughters take up a more domestic role. Varieties do exist on national levels, however, and female literacy levels can sometimes exceed the male rate even in impoverished nations, such as Lesotho (where the difference was over 17 percent in 2014); nonetheless, these are exceptions to the norm.

There is a gender gap in the global literacy rate. Although literacy rates have generally increased worldwide for both men and women, men are on average more literate than women. As of 2023, about 90.6 percent of men and a little less than 84.1 percent of women in the world were literate. Adult literacy rate is defined as the percentage of people aged 15 years and above who can both read and write with understanding a short simple statement about their everyday life. Youth literacy rate Not only does the literacy gender gap concern adults, it also exists among the world’s younger generations aged 15 to 24. Despite an overall increase in literacy, young men are still more literate than young women. In fact, the global youth literacy rate as gender parity index was 0.98 as of 2023, indicating that young women are not yet as literate as young men. Gender pay gap Gender gaps occur in many different spheres of global society. One such issue concerns salary gender gaps in the professional life. Regarding the controlled gender pay gap, which measures the median salary for men and women with the same job and qualifications, women still earned less than men as of 2024. The difference was even bigger when measuring the median salary for all men and women. However, not everyone worries about gender pay gaps. According to a survey from 2021, 54 percent of the female respondents deemed the gender pay gap a real problem, compared to 45 percent of the male respondents.

The results of a survey carried out in the UK in 2019/2020 show which generations are more likely to read magazines or newspapers while watching TV. Just under a third of over 65s sometimes do so. Roughly one fifth of all respondents hardly ever do this.

According to a survey held in the United Kingdom in March 2020, 47 percent of respondents aged 16 years and older typically read physical hardback books, whereas 60 percent engaged with physical paperbacks the most. By contrast, just eight percent said they most typically listened to audiobooks, and 22 percent said they did not read or listen to books at all.

As of April 2022, the government of the United Kingdom has dispatched over 1.95 million laptop or tablet devices to local authorities or education providers in England in order to support remote learning during the coronavirus pandemic. This scheme initially started to provide laptops and tablets to schools in May 2020 during the Summer term of the 2019/20 academic year and was expanded significantly at the start of 2021, increasing from 562 thousand in December 2020 to more than one million two months later in February 2021.

A survey carried out in the United Kingdom in September 2021 found that 52 percent of respondents did not take any action after encountering what they believed to be false or misleading information on the COVID-19 outbreak. Whilst this figure was lower than the share who said the same in the 2020 survey, taking no action remained the most common response to fake coronavirus news. Meanwhile, 16 percent used a fact checking site or tool to determine whether or not the information they found was true, and 14 percent turned to family or friends for help in confirming the legitimacy of news they suspected to be false.

For further information about the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, please visit our dedicated Facts and Figures page.

According to a survey conducted in 2022, the share of internet users in the United Kingdom who had consumed e-books illegally via either a mix of legal and illegal sources or exclusively illegal sources was 24 percent in the three months running to the survey. This was up by 10 percent from the previous year.

In 2022, students in the United Kingdom achieved an average PISA score of 494 in reading, compared with 504 in 2018. This was the joint-lowest score in the provided time period, suggesting that reading ability among students has declined in the UK.

In 2020, the share of internet users reading news online in the United Kingdom increased by 3.5 percentage points since 2019. Therefore, the share of online news readers in the United Kingdom reached a peak in 2020 with 73.9 percent. Notably, the share of online news readers has been, with the exception of 2016, continuously increasing over the last years.The EU survey on the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in households and by individuals is an annual survey conducted since 2002 aiming at collecting and disseminating harmonised and comparable information on the use of ICT in households and by individuals. Data presented in this domain are collected on a yearly basis by the National Statistical Institutes and are based on Eurostat's annual model questionnaire. This questionnaire is updated each year to reflect the evolving situation of information and communication technologiesFind more statistics on other topics about the United Kingdom with key insights such as share of internet users seeking health information online, share of internet users looking for and applying for jobs online, and share of people that upload self-created content.

This statistic shows the share of children who participated in reading and writing activities in the last year in England, according to annual surveys conducted between 2008/09 and 2019/20. Over this period, levels of involvement in reading and writing activities have generally decreased. In 2019/20, around 81 percent of children aged 5-10 years took part in reading and writing activities.

Reading and writing activities were the most popular arts activities outside of school for both boys and girls in England. According to the survey, 78.9 percent of boys and 83.7 percent of girls had taken participated in reading and/or writing in the 12 months prior to being surveyed. Film and video activities were also popular for around 70 percent of young boys.

The share of young people aged eight to 14 years old in the United Kingdom who read on a daily basis remained at 58.6 percent in 2024. Back in 2015, the percentage who read everyday was over 40 percent, and reading enjoyment was also down among some age groups in 2023.

According to a survey held in early 2023, 50.7 percent of children and young people read printed fiction books outside of school, down slightly from the previous year. Whilst there remains a clear preference for printed books, digital engagement is growing, with 2023 marking the second time that the percentage of eight to 18-year-olds reading fiction on a screen rather than in paper form surpassed 25 percent.

A survey investigating book consumption in the United Kingdom in March 2020 found that 33 percent of respondents aged 16 years or older most enjoyed reading crime, thrillers, and mystery books, making this genre the most popular. Meanwhile, fantasy fiction and action and adventure books were the favorite among 22 percent and 20 percent of respondents respectively.

The European questionnaire on Information and Communication Technologies Data reveals that there exists a disparity between the internet usage of people according to gender. This disparity although present in most countries, differs widely in its severity.

By 2020, 76 percent of male internet users in the United Kingdom used the internet to access online new sites, newspapers, or news magazines. Among women this share was slightly lower and amounted to 72 percent. Since 2013, 13 percent more men and 19 percent more women replied that they used the internet for the purpose of keeping up to date with current news and events.

In the early months of 2023, 43.7 percent of children and young people in the United Kingdom reported having read printed non-fiction books in their spare time, down from more than 48 percent in the survey held between late 2017 to early 2018. Although print remains the more popular format, the share of young people using digital alternatives to read non-fiction books is gradually growing.

Out of all ethnic groups, pupils from the White Irish and Chinese ethnic groups were most likely to meet the expected standard in reading in 2018/19.

These data were generated from Professional Doctorate research set within two UK universities that explored how university lecturers construct their knowledge of information and digital literacy.

Workshops were convened with an expert group of librarians, learning technologists, and lecturers with the aim of forming a multi-professional understanding of the digital competencies relevant to university lecturers through an information literacy lens. Workshop materials and completed worksheets are included in the dataset.

A further interview phase of the research was conducted with eight lecturers. Pseudonymised interview transcripts are provided along with codes I generated from the data.

Utilising a contextual constructionism methodology (Nichols, 2015), my Professional Doctorate research aimed to explore the competencies that university lecturers require to be digitally competent. I began by investigating how digital competence is associated to information literacy, as related to university lecturers, by using a framework as a lens.

I then convened workshops with an expert group of librarians, learning technologists, and lecturers, key stakeholders in information and digital literacy, and curricula and lecturer development. The workshops aimed to form a multi-professional understanding of the digital competencies relevant to university lecturers through an information literacy lens.

To further my understanding of how university lecturers construct their knowledge of information and digital literacy, I undertook in-depth interviews with eight lecturers with the aim of better understanding the workshop data. Using a thematic analysis method, I concluded that lecturer construction of digital competence is still at an embryonic stage. Most lecturers struggled with the language of digital competence and information literacy as described in frameworks.

According to a study on media consumption in the United Kingdom between 2017 and 2021, the average time spent consuming newspapers has been consistently low, with adults spending an average of 13 minutes reading newspapers per day in 2018 and 2019. TV consumption seems to be more popular, with respondents averaging two hours and 49 minutes of daily TV time in 2019. At the same time, this number is estimated to decrease slightly in 2020 and 2021.

The European questionnaire on Information and Communication Technologies Data reveals that there exists a disparity between the internet usage of people of different age groups. This disparity although present in most countries, differs widely in its severity.

In 2019, 77 percent of internet users in the United Kingdom between 16 and 24 responded that they used the internet to access online new sites, newspapers, or news magazines. Even more, 83 percent of the 25- to 34-year-olds used the internet in 2020 to inform themselves about news. Users among the 35- to 44-year-olds is similarly high, while users aged between 45 and 54 years were less likely to inform themselves on the internet. Least likely were people aged between 55 and 64 years old, with only 63 percent responding that they used the internet as a source for news information. This however this number has increased by 15 percent since 2014.