New Te Rourou research says internet access is now essential for young people, but cost, outages, scams and AI-driven trust questions are widening the digital inclusion brief.
Connected Rangatahi research graphic showing six themes of digital inclusion.
A new digital-inclusion report has shifted the access debate beyond coverage maps and into the daily trust questions young New Zealanders now face online.
Te Rourou, the charitable foundation of One New Zealand, says Connected Rangatahi: Digital Inclusion in the Age of AI drew on one-to-one and group discussions with 28 rangatahi aged mainly 16 to 24. The research names six connected themes: cost, physical access, trust, safety, skills and empowerment.
The practical finding is blunt. Young people described the internet as part of education, job seeking, banking, services, personal interests and connection with friends, whanau and community. When device costs, data costs, unreliable coverage or power cuts interrupt that connection, the impact can reach far beyond entertainment.
The report also gives AI a public-policy edge. Rangatahi raised bullying, scams, harmful content, social media pressure, misinformation and generative AI as reasons the online environment can be harder to navigate with confidence. The issue is not whether young people use digital tools. It is whether they can trust what they find and help shape the systems that increasingly shape them.
Te Rourou says the next steps should treat reliable and affordable connection as essential, strengthen safety and trust in digital environments, and include rangatahi more directly in digital policy and practice. That makes the report a technology story, but also a youth, education and community-infrastructure story.
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