Welcome to the United Nations
15 July 2025 marked a dual milestone: the 10th anniversary of World Youth Skills Day (WYSD) and the 5th anniversary of the Global Skills Academy (GSA). The theme for WYSD 2025 focused on Youth empowerment through AI and digital skills.
As the Fourth Industrial Revolution reshapes economies through Artificial Intelligence (AI), Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) must evolve to equip youth with future-ready skills. AI is transforming how we live, learn and work — but it also poses serious risks if not implemented equitably.
Why this matters
AI is rapidly changing TVET by:
- Personalizing learning through intelligent tutoring systems
- Supporting immersive training using virtual reality (VR)
- Streamlining certification and career guidance
- Modernizing curricula and aligning training with labour market needs
But without systemic reform, the digital divide will grow, especially for marginalized youth.
Key challenges
While AI brings opportunities, it also presents major challenges in TVET:
- Bias & inequality: AI systems can reinforce gender and geographic disparities.
- Low educator readiness: Many teachers lack confidence in using AI tools.
- Limited infrastructure: Most TVET institutions lack the capacity to adopt advanced AI tools.
- High costs: Many regions lack funding to scale up AI-driven learning.
- Ethical & privacy concerns: AI’s reliance on data and lack of transparency raises critical questions.
- Digital misinformation: AI can amplify hate speech, fake news and cyber threats if not well governed.
- Underrepresentation: Women and marginalized groups remain significantly underrepresented in AI fields.
- Human disconnection: Over-reliance on AI risks undermining essential human elements like mentorship and teamwork.
WYSD 2025: Youth empowerment through AI and digital skills
This infographic is a ready-to-use visual resource designed to support the celebration of World Youth Skills Day 2025. It highlights key global insights on youth empowerment, digital skills and the transformative role of AI—featuring statistics on gender gaps, digital access and economic engagement. This infographic can be downloaded and printed for use in events, workshops, exhibitions or awareness campaigns, making it a powerful tool to spark conversations and inspire action around youth skills development.
A call to action
We invite governments, educators, youth, policy-makers and tech developers to come together and:
- Advocate for ethical, inclusive and human-centered AI in TVET
- Collaborate globally to share best practices and fund digital skills training
- Support grassroots innovations that increase youth employability
- Amplify youth voices in decision-making about the future of work
Be part of shaping an inclusive, ethical and empowering future for all youth through AI and digital skills.
Highlights video - 10 years of WYSD
Youth survey report
Drawing on insights from over 4,000 respondents across 128 countries, this survey report examines how young people are navigating both the opportunities and challenges of the digital era. While 62% of youth are already using AI in real-world contexts, only 30% have received formal training — highlighting critical gaps in access, ethics and infrastructure.
These findings underscore the need for equitable digital education, responsible AI integration and greater youth participation in policy-making, offering valuable guidance for supporting youth in harnessing the skills and opportunities they need for a digital future.
Youth voices
UNESCO-UNEVOC invited young people between the ages of 15 and 35 to showcase how they are leveraging digitalization and artificial intelligence to transform their everyday life, education and training, solve real-world challenges and seize new opportunities in their communities.
Below is a compilation of selected youth voices. You can watch all of the youth voices videos through the YouTube playlist
Read the full article here
Source: UNESCO-UNEVOC