Despite the growing ubiquity of internet technologies and online services, we still face an unequal distribution of internet skills among different groups of individuals. Some individuals try to compensate for their own lack of internet skills through proxy internet use (PIU), where they ask someone else to perform an online activity on their behalf. In this thesis, we compared internet skills of four groups of internet users engaged in proxy internet use (as both proxy users and users-by-proxy, only proxy users, only users-by-proxy, or not engaged). We have compared these groups among Slovenian and the British internet users. In the empirical study, we analysed data from the Slovenian Public Opinion Survey (2018) and the Internet Access and Use survey (2019). The results show that internet users who are involved in PIU as providers or receivers have different levels of internet skills. In particular, those who are providing PIU have higher levels of internet skills while receivers of PIU have lower levels of internet skills. This has been shown among internet users in Slovenia as well as internet users in the UK. We also found that there are noticeable differences in levels of internet skills between Slovenian and UK internet users considering their involvement in proxy internet use.
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