The time a child spends with a computer may seem small at first.
Typing a few words. Looking something up. Making an image. Changing a game setting. Trying again when something does not work. Those small experiences gradually build the feeling that "I can use this myself."
A fourth-grader today will enter the workforce around 2035. No one can predict exactly what that labour market will look like. Even so, the data and technology trends already in motion point clearly in one direction.
The gap between people with digital skills and those without may be much larger than it is now.
The Income Gap Is Already Here
According to 2025 data, the average annual salary for IT engineers in Japan is approximately ¥5.5 million — already 1.2 times the national average across all industries. For specialists in AI and machine learning, compensation in the ¥8–12 million range has become a realistic benchmark, and some companies have begun offering new graduates with advanced digital skills over ¥10 million.
Meanwhile, the wage ceiling for routine administrative roles — those most exposed to AI automation — is growing comparatively flat. Two people entering the workforce in the same year can expect significantly different salary trajectories depending on the skills they bring with them.
The Question Is Not "Will They Struggle" — It Is "How Wide Will Their Options Be"
The concern is not simply that children without computer skills will be disadvantaged. The deeper point is that children who grow up freely using computers, and those who do not, will arrive in the workforce with fundamentally different ranges of available choices.
In the labour market of 2035, a substantial portion of routine data entry, document production, and aggregation work is projected to be handled by automated tools. The World Economic Forum estimates that 44% of workers' core skills will change within the next five years, and Microsoft AI's CEO has stated that most white-collar tasks could be automated by AI in the near term. The dividing line — between those who direct AI and those whose work AI absorbs — correlates strongly with whether a person grew up comfortable with a computer.
A Computer Builds a Way of Thinking, Not Just a Technical Skill
Children who have made things on a computer develop a natural habit of breaking problems into structured parts. The logical habit of asking "why isn't this working?" The optimising instinct of asking "how could this be done more efficiently?" These are not merely programming skills. They are patterns of thought that are indispensable for using AI tools actively rather than passively.
Conversely, a person who first encounters these challenges as an adult faces a real disadvantage — not because the skills are unlearnable, but because habits and intuitions are built slowly, over time. Learning a procedure is different from growing up in a culture of trial and error. The latter produces something that cannot easily be acquired in an adult training course.
Today's Environment Shapes Tomorrow's Options
The digital skills gap is not a gap in innate ability. It is a gap in environment. Whether there is a computer at home. Whether there is somewhere to experiment freely after school. These differences are what show up, ten years later, as differences in how many paths a young adult can choose from.
At Digital Kodomo BASE, we address this environmental gap directly: by providing refurbished computers free of charge to children who do not have one at home, and by maintaining an open space in Ota Ward where any child can freely explore programming, AI tools, and digital creation. The options available in ten years are being shaped by the environments available today. Every child deserves that environment — not only children born into households where it already exists.