Cyprus: 76% of people aged 16–24 use generative AI, but only 64% have basic digital skills
So at least one young resident in eight uses AI without the full set of basic skills. The gap is wider nowhere among 35 European countries; in Finland it runs the other way, 67% and 90%.
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Both shares come from one Eurostat survey of the same people aged 16–24. If more people use AI than have basic skills, at least the difference uses AI without the full set of skills. The new tool reached the young faster than the basics. Finland runs the other way, so it is not simply age.
Bars: share of people aged 16–24, 2025: used generative AI in the past 3 months, and have basic digital skills in all five areas.
- Cyprus: generative AI, 16–24 %
2025: 76.5
- Cyprus: basic digital skills, 16–24 %
2025: 63.9
- Finland: generative AI, 16–24 %
2025: 67.1
- Finland: basic digital skills, 16–24 %
2025: 89.9
Eurostat, 2025 survey on ICT use in households. Skills (Digital Skills Indicator 2.0) are judged by what a person did in 3 months: searched and checked information, communicated, created files, protected their data, solved problems. AI above skills in 8 of 35 countries.
Skills are not an exam but a set of things done in three months; chatting with AI needs none of them. The card does not say AI harms skills. Young Cypriots are weakest in online safety. The 2025 dip in skills is one wave of a small sample, part of the gap may be chance; the AI question was first asked in 2025.
A question for this picture
And at school? 61% of Cypriot 15-year-olds read below the basic level.