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Information and communication technology (ICT) usage is pervasive among present day youth, with about 95% of youth ages 12–17 years reporting use of the Internet. Due to the proliferation of ICT use among this generation, it is important to understand the impacts of ICT usage on well-being. The goal of this study was to determine the impact of ICT usage on psychological well-being among a sample of urban, predominately African American youth.

Paper and pencil surveys were administered to fourth and fifth grade students enrolled in 27 elementary schools in the southeastern United States. Relationships between hours using various types of ICTs and the frequency of Internet activities on depression, hopelessness, self-esteem, and belonging were examined using Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression.

Results indicate that ICT usage has both positive and negative implications for psychological well-being, depending upon the type of ICT use and outcome being examined.

The proliferation of ICT usage among present day youth may actually lessen its impact on psychological well-being. Since the amount of ICT usage does not seem to influence psychological well-being, future research should examine the impact of ICT content on psychological well-being.

This study presents an innovative approach to Information and communication technology (ICT) skill training and employment generation for out-of-school and disadvantaged youths in Africa. With technical and policy assistance from the World Bank, ICTs can be used to revitalize technical and vocational training to meet skill and employment needs of disadvantaged youths in the region. The deplorable conditions of out-of-school youth and the state of secondary education in Africa underscore the urgency to engage disadvantaged youth in productive economic activities. An ICT-enhanced technical and vocational training program in Africa provides both private and social gains: it provides economic prospects for disadvantaged youth and; it adds to the development of the knowledge economy in Africa. The NairoBits Digital Design School in Kenya is presented as a model of a vocational and training school that uses ICTs to improve skill formation among disadvantaged youths in informal settlements in urban Africa. Meeting the objectives of an ICT-based training and employment generation program for underprivileged youth in Africa require strong regulatory frameworks and contributions from the World Bank. The involvement of the bank, particularly through private sector grants for ICT skill train in Africa will help to revitalize technical and vocational education and training in the region. Above all, the collaboration of government agencies, private businesses, other international development agencies and civil society groups in ICT skill training will help to meaningfully engage African youths in the development of their communities in the emerging knowledge economy.

This paper argues that through information and communication technology (ICT) adoption, the youth will be engaged in all nodes of the agricultural value chains, thereby improving the level of employment and reducing post-harvest losses. The study examines the determinants of ICT adoption among the youth. In addition, it estimates the impact of ICT adoption on youth employment in agriculture towards the actualisation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG-8, to promote inclusive and sustainable economic growth, productive employment and decent work for all.

The study engages data from Wave 4 (2018/2019) of the Living Standards Measurement Study – Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA). The logit regression, the propensity score matching and the inverse probability weighted regression adjustment are used as the estimation techniques.

The study underscores that educational level, access to electricity, location, age and income are significant determinants of ICT adoption among the youth. The findings also show that the youth's average weekly engagement in agricultural activities is about 24 h. In addition, the result reveals that ICT adoption can increase youth agricultural employment by approximately 21%. The mean difference indicates that those with access to ICT participate in agricultural activities more than their counterparts without ICT access by 29.46%.

One of the limitations of the study is that some of the variables such as insecurity, social protection/safety nets, that may have a significant influence on youth agricultural participation where not included in the model due to data constraint. As a recommendation for further studies, given data availability, such variables should be considered when examining youth-agricultural employment nexus.

Since ICT adoption has a significant impact on agricultural employment, this study proposes improved infrastructure facilities such as reliable power supply, lowering the cost of mobile and data subscriptions and better education facilities should be prioritised at all localities. This will enable the youth to embrace agriculture and help improve their socioeconomic welfare and livelihood.

Using Wave 4 of the LSMS-ISA, logit regression, propensity score matching and the inverse probability weighted regression adjustment, makes this study one of the very few to examine the impact of ICT adoption on agricultural employment among the youth in Nigeria. It implies that this study has provided empirical evidence and expanded the frontiers of knowledge on the extent to which ICT adoption influences youth agricultural employment in Nigeria.

The purpose of this paper is to operationalise infomediaries in an agricultural context, specifically upland rice farming. Infomediaries are people who facilitate access to information and communication technologies (ICTs). This offers a socially grounded solution to the nagging issue of the digital divide.

This research is predominantly qualitative. The methods used were time transects, mobility mapping, photovoice, individual and key informant interviews. In total, 38 farmers' children from the upland communities in the provinces of Albay and Aurora participated in this research. Theoretically, this paper aims to contribute to literature on ICT 2.0.

The participants showed strong desire to help their parents on the rice farm, directly or indirectly. They had varying levels of proficiency in using ICTs. Average weekly expenditure on purchasing prepaid mobile phone credits was US$1.50. Evidence of mobile addiction (sending more than 200 text messages daily) was noted. Their youth's intimate relationship with ICTs increases hope that they can serve as infomediaries for their farmer-parents.

This research is anchored on giving context-specific solutions to ICT issues. Transferability is emphasised over generalisability.

Based on the mobility maps of the participants, their respective schools can serve as the nuclei for agricultural extension. The schools serve as their convergence point. This offers an alternative to the difficulty of individually visiting the farmers in the area, which is confounded by the scarcity of agricultural technologists tasked to do the job.

The paper offers an alternative extension mode, drawn from the intimate relationship between young people and ICTs. This is a welcome initiative, particularly because such initiatives to engage youth in agriculture, directly or indirectly, remain scarce. The ideas forwarded in this paper will benefit agricultural agencies in the Philippines and other developing countries.

Smart cities can be understood as an inclusive space for each and everyone to achieve their best options, within the framework of sustainable development, where institutions boost information and technology environments that help achieve the highest individual and social well-being with the aim of improving the lives of citizens. The youth group (between 15 and 24 years) was severely affected by the crisis. In this paper, youth employability, in relation to the new challenges of smart cities, is analyzed in the EU with the aim of assessing the influence of information and communication technologies (ICTs) skills on youth employability.

By means of a mean analysis and structural equation modeling, the differences between the Eurozone and the other countries in the EU is analyzed, as well as the importance of information technologies and the computer skills for increasing youth employability.

The results indicate that awareness of the importance of IT skills is greater in the Eurozone and that computer skills are highly significant to explain the employability of young people.

The achieved conclusions point out to the training on computers skills as a key factor for boosting youth employment.

This work could provide some tools to help policymakers design instruments for increasing youth employment, as well as to provide training mechanisms to obtain the skilled workforce needed for the enterprises that emerged in the environment of smart cities.

The main original value of this work is to relate computers skills and the employment rates for youth in the framework of the European Union.

To identify research work on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the context of young girls’ affective responses to access and use of ICT in developing countries.

A literature search covering the period from early 1990s to date in fields of information science, human–computer interaction, ICT, and educational technologies was performed using relevant databases and Google Scholar. Related literature in the context of specific theoretical frameworks was retrieved and analyzed.

Abundant research exists on ICT in developing countries. However, little empirical work was found on young girls’ affective responses to access and use of ICT. The gendered digital divide in relation to ICT showed differing perspectives on this issue. Generally, affective information behavior is much less observed in empirical research than the cognitive behavior, regardless of age, gender, or culture.

Young girls’ affective responses to access and use of ICT in these countries warrant additional research in this area of study. Findings from research on youth information behavior in Western countries may have little or no bearings on youth in developing countries. The study of young girls’ access and use of ICT in developing countries should account for cultural, socioeconomic, and institutional differences among countries and between societies or communities in a given developing country.

Minimal research exists on young girls’ affective responses to accessing and using ICT in developing countries. The literature review covered in this chapter is grounded in theoretical frameworks derived from varied disciplines, including the field of library and information science.

Existing literature affirms that almost half of the young generation has remained unemployed worldwide. On the contrary civic engagement can be a powerful tool in combating this problem. However, the influencing factors that encourage the active participation of young adults yet to be identified. The purpose of this paper is to fill the research gap by creating and validating a research model by including three motives social presence commitment and online offline civic engagement.

The study took a quantitative approach to conduct a cross-sectional study. In total, 214 data were collected from the member of a Facebook group of Bangladesh named Foodbank, a restaurant review page through the online questionnaire. After that structural equation modelling techniques have been used to analyse the data, test the model validity and hypothesis.

The result shows that both commitment and social presence influence offline and online civic engagement. Excitement motives have a higher effect than information and convenience motive. Besides, 8 out of 10 hypotheses have shown significant results, with only the convenience motive not having any positive influence and effect on social presence and commitment.

Almost 47.6 out of 158.5 million are young people who are incapable of contributing fully to national development due to a lack of civic engagement. The outcome of this study will be useful for the Government of Bangladesh, as well as for non-governmental organisations and decision-making authorities to form assessments and develop policy on how to engage the young generation in civic activities to achieve further socio-economic development in the country.

This study contributes to existing literature with newly developed relationships between social presence-civic engagement and commitment-civic engagement. These unique relationships have been empirically tested and resulted insignificant. The study also identifies that it is vital to engage young people more in social works and increase their participation in offline and online activities.

This case study was designed using the qualitative research method of interviews with key employees to investigate university social responsibility (USR) practices within Institut Catholique de Kabgayi (ICK) in Rwanda and to advance understanding of ways USR is defined against a postgenocide history, to identify its core components, and to track how it is communicated. Key respondents in accordance with their relationships with internal and external stakeholder groups were interviewed from among functions/departments of public relations, human resource management, community outreach, student services, courses and examination office, and the ombudsperson who plays an intermediary role between employees and employer in case of conflict. Findings suggest that for this higher education organization, on one hand, USR is understood mainly as stakeholder aid and Christian engagement benefitting employees, students, and community members according to specific needs. On the other hand, USR also is understood in terms of privacy protection and as a research driver that integrates openness, flexibility, and autonomy. Core components comprising USR are extension services, business incubation, student volunteer services, public relations activities, public works services, alumni relations, and employee outreach services. Means for communicating USR are face-to-face communication, partnerships, and mass media channels.

As the deployment of ICT and the Internet especially increases all around the world, the urgency of providing access to the “have-nots” appears at least diminished, with new issues and urgencies at the forefront. However, studies show that even when the best conditions for access are established, not everyone uses their digital devices for the same purposes, even when sharing the same goals, or when participating in the same experiences.

To explore potential explanations of these phenomena, this study examines survey data from students from a private university in Peru regarding their backgrounds and expertise with ICT. We use the twin concepts of social and cultural capital to establish a connection between their larger lifeworld experiences and their use of digital media. For this purpose, we analyze the data using polychoric correlations to explore patterns resulting from self-perception of access and skills, as well as processes related to social capital such as differentiated media use.

Findings indicate that there are differentiated processes of capital accrual using ICTs, but, at the same time, the productive and leisure dimensions of ICT use must be considered.

The purpose of this chapter is to evaluate the completeness and substantiation of the indicators of implementation of measures on information society’s formation in the conditions of information war and economic sanctions from foreign countries, and to assess the dynamics of indicators and their achievability according to the plans of state development.

The adequately selected list of target indicators will determine the future national policy regarding the process of informatization in all spheres of national economy. Moreover, the indicators set at the stage of planning of national events will signal the correspondence of the obtained result to the planned result.

The research applies the methods of graphic presentation of information, trend analysis, method of comparison, analogy, and systematization.

According to the peculiarities of the information economy’s optimization model, the main indicators of implementing of measures for the formation of information society are: index of development of information technologies; share of citizens who received state and municipal services online; share of the population that do not use the internet; level of differentiation of the subjects of the RF regarding integral indicators; share of households with access to the internet; number of highly efficient jobs according to the type of economic activities “communication.” Evaluation of implementation of these indicators and their completeness proved the necessity for reconsidering the transfer of the implemented measures and reducing the number of ineffective ones.

The viewed target indicators and evaluation of achievement of these indicators of efficiency of state management of the process of implementing the model could be the basis for future correction of the process of implementation of this program. The used method of analysis could be recommended as the methodological provision of monitoring and control over the implementation of information economy’s optimization model.