Ask ten people what to call the age we live in and you get several different answers. That is not people being careless. Each name is an argument about what matters most right now.
The guide's own wording: “Digital society” is a contested term. There may be multiple digital societies rather than just one — a farmer using a weather app and a trader using a millisecond feed are both in one, but not the same one.
The five names you should be able to use
- Information age — what is valuable is information, not steel or coal.
- Computer age — the machine is the thing that changed.
- Post-industrial society — services and knowledge work replaced factories.
- Network society — what matters is not the computers but the links between them.
- Fourth industrial revolution — physical, digital and biological systems merging.
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Picking a name means picking what you think is really driving the change. Examiners like answers that spot this, because it shows you are thinking about the term and not just repeating it.
| Name | Says the driver is | Plays down |
|---|---|---|
| Information age | Information as the key resource | Who owns the infrastructure |
| Computer age | The device itself | The social use made of it |
| Post-industrial society | A shift in what work is | That factories still exist, elsewhere |
| Network society | Connection between people and machines | The isolated and unconnected |
| Fourth industrial revolution | Convergence of technologies | Continuity with earlier revolutions |
Five names for one society. Each card shows what that name claims the driver is — and, in the third step, what it plays down.
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“Multiple digital societies” is examinable: If a question asks whether we live in a digital society, the strongest answers say for whom. A country with 5G in its capital and no electricity in its villages is not one society.
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The term is useful when you use it to ask a question, not to stick a label on a whole era. These two examples show how wide it has to stretch.
Real-world examples you can name
The people still offline — ITU Facts and Figures — 2023 estimate
The International Telecommunication Union estimated roughly 2.6 billion people had never used the internet, with the gap concentrated in low-income countries and, within countries, among women, rural populations and older people.
Who it affected: About a third of humanity, who cannot reach services the rest treat as default.
M-Pesa mobile money — launched 2007
Money is sent as a text message and cashed in or out at a local agent, so a phone becomes a bank account without a bank. Research has linked it to households moving out of extreme poverty, particularly those headed by women.
Who it affected: People with a phone but no bank branch within reach.
Try it: Which of the five names best describes M-Pesa mobile money (Kenya, then across East Africa, launched 2007)? “Network society” fits — the phones are ordinary, the agent network is what is new.
How this is tested — you have to define a contested term and then argue with it. It comes up two ways:
Paper 1 — structured question
- Part a: identify or outline two names for digital society
- Part c: “to what extent” questions about whether a described society counts as digital
Paper 2 — source-based question
- Q1: identify how a source characterises digital society
- Q3: compare two sources that use different names for the same change
The trap: defining instead of arguing: A definition earns the AO1 marks and stops there. The AO3 marks come from saying who the term fits, who it leaves out, and why that matters.
Outline two terms used to describe contemporary society.
Model answer plan
See the mark-by-mark plan — for / against / judgement, with marking guidance — in study mode.
To what extent is it accurate to describe the world today as a single digital society?
Model answer plan
See the mark-by-mark plan — for / against / judgement, with marking guidance — in study mode.