The impact of information and communication technologies (ICT) on the lives of entire societies and individual members is now widely discussed and is the subject of many research projects. One of the problems strongly associated with the evolution of the information society is the emergence of the digital divide - on one side there are beneficiaries of change, on the other those who are not keeping pace with the development and, therefore, incur relatively high costs. Given the complexity of the factors responsible for the emergence of digital inequality, the objective of article was to decide to what extent some of these factors are specific to European countries, and to what extent, they are universal. Based on the data from the European Social Survey study completed in late 2010 and 2011, a comparative analysis between Internet users and nonusers coming from a dozen European countries. The issues that were the basis for comparisons related to a number of key questions: 1) socio-demographic characteristics, 2) involvement in social and political activities and activity in family and friendship relations, 3) the use of traditional media, and 4) the nature of the personality profiles
Keywords: ICT , information society, European universality, digitalization