You are here

Internet access in households increases

08/12/2016 09:42
During 2016, internet access in households continued to increase and reached 74.4% compared to 71.2% in 2015, according to a survey announced by the Statistical Service, on information and communication technologies (ICT) usage in households 2016.

The main reason for not accessing the Internet from home is that people don’t need the internet (60% of total households that do not have access) and the second most important is the lack of skills (56.3%).

According to the survey, 75.9% of individuals aged 16 – 74 years old used the internet during the first quarter of 2016 compared to 71.7% in 2015. At the same time 74.1% of persons is using the internet at least once a week.

Almost all persons aged 16 – 24 years old (99.0%) use the internet at least once a week. This percentage decreases with age, even though for individuals 65 – 74 years old the use of internet increased to 26.4% in 2016 compared to 23,0% in 2015. Men are using the internet more frequently than women with percentage 75.7% and 72.5% respectively.

Highly educated persons (93.7%) use the internet more frequently than persons with lower
education level (43.4%).

The most popular Internet activities are the following: finding information about goods and services (81.1%), participating in social networks (79.0%), watching video content from sharing services (78.8%), reading online news/newspapers/magazines (73.2%), followed by telephoning over the internet and sending/receiving (71.8%).

Persons with access to the internet stated that they use their mobile or smart phone to access internet at home reached 88.3%, 68.9% use their laptop and 36.9% use their tablet computer.

Concerning e-commerce, 22.1% of persons aged 16 – 74 years old made online orders for goods and services in the first quarter of 2016 compared to 18.7% in 2015.

The most popular category of goods/services ordered online were the following: clothes or sports goods (52.6%), other travel arrangements such as transport tickets, car hire etc. (49.8%) and holiday accommodation (40.9%). According to figures 79.4% of individuals who made online orders did not face any problem during the process. The amount spent for goods or services over the internet was usually between 100-500 euros.

The percentage of households with access to tablet computers reached 40.3% in 2016 compared to 39.2% in 2015. At the same time, there is a decrease in the percentage of households that own a desktop computer from 22.5% in 2015 to 20.5% in 2016.

A percentage of 93.7% of households with dependent children own a computer whereas the corresponding percentage of households without dependent children is 63%.