A new set of literacy issues in the digital age was identified in Malaysia on 8 September (International Literacy Day 2025), and it once more attracts new attention. This year is the Literacy for a Transforming World approach, whereby the traditional literacy and writing skills should be complemented with the digital, financial, and functional literacy to capture the shift into a global economy rapidly transitioning to digitalization.
The UNESCO mission is facing an emerging challenge
It was on this occasion in 1966 that the latter was being celebrated as UNESCO declared the International Literacy Day. During this period, it had already come to be more than half the world in the ghetto of the illiterate, and the trouble of making the trouble a classical development trouble. It has altered its mission almost half a century ago, and it is an urgent one.
Literacy is concerned with dignity, possibility, and liberty as suggested by UNESCO; however, not merely regarding the alphabet. The organization will observe that despite the entire global population currently being literate (34.6 percent are now capable of reading and writing), it has acknowledged that hundreds of millions of individuals are disenfranchised, especially the female population and other minorities.
Digital literacy will become a frontier
Lack of internet access and technological skills, indicated by their exposure of millions of people to the lack of education during the pandemic years, pointed to digital literacy as a new frontier. With the world turning into an environment in which jobs are being redefined by artificial intelligence and automation, basic literacy no longer suffices, and instead, functional, digital, and financial literacy become essential to the survival of a contemporary economy, professionals highlight.
Still, decades of progress will not address the challenge in 2025 until it is met. By 2024, there will be at least 739 million youth and adults in the world who do not have basic literacy skills. Moreover, there are scary statistics of children not getting at least the minimum on reading scores, and it gets even worse with millions of children out of school, endangering further development.
Digitizing literacy
The interest of the observation in the current year is bordered by sharp attention to management of the changes in technology, social, and economic dynamics. Thus, Head Literacy to a Transforming World is an alarming title, particularly given the fact that governments, educators, and activists continue using rhetoric to embrace policies that would not only expand access to education, but also its quality.
Extra-Prunus, to get rid of chronic patterns of inequalities
Literacy gaps are increasing, particularly in developing countries, through displacement, economic inequality, and conflict. On the grassroots level, book repositories, grassroots fundraising, and digital inclusion initiatives are being conducted at an international scale, and communities are attempting to seal such gaps. The entire day gives an understanding that literacy is not everything in reading and writing, but the foundation of acquiring general knowledge and skills, as is the case with educational professionals.
The stereotype becomes wider in understanding how to get around in the digital spaces, understanding financial concepts, and understanding just about complex information systems. The mobilization of policymakers, teachers, and communities to control the literacy problems has taken place over a period of over 60 years.
The explanation is that the work undertaken by International Literacy Day 2025 is incomplete. To all the children still of school-going age, to all of the adults who have never had the chance to learn, and all the communities that do not have access to the digital world, it may be time to repeat the message: being literate is not a privilege; it is the door to our world that is becoming increasingly digital.