22% of European citizens do not use the internet | Hacker News Reader

22% of European citizens do not use the internet

appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu

37 pointsthomasbachem37 comments

17.5% of EU's population is in the 65+ age bracket

http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index....

how many are illiterate children?

I saw illiterate children using Youtube. If an adult (or link) open one of their favorite song or cartoon, then they can jump to another videos for a long time, using the thumbnail image (and sometimes a few words that they understand)

Even my 18 month old niece can use the iPad to open YouTube, click around a bit, or more likely go to the history and view her previously watched stuff and navigate around that way.

Not only that, but speech recognition search is quite good enough to find e.g. "My Little Pony".

I believe the number is around 20% overall for the USA.

In the 65+ age bracket, it's much higher - around 44%:

http://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2013/08/tackling-greate...

What constitutes Internet use in this research? Which part of the infrastructure has to be involved for it to count? Those questions don't have clear answers.

According to Methodological Manual, they were asking questions such as “When did you last use the Internet?” during face-to-face and phone interviews.

They did ask about using Internet and websites from mobile devices, in addition to “computers”. However, I'm not sure if many non-technical users would qualify updating an app (which may happen automatically), or performing various in-app activities (also may happen automatically, like updating weather forecast) as using the Internet.

So it seems to be more indicative of how many Europeans, of those who do agree to phone or face-to-face interviews, deliberately access email or web sites.

I agree. Here in Spain, even the oldest grandpas are using WhatsApp. Is that using the Internet? Maybe they meant the web...

Only 10% of UK citizens have never used the Internet?

That's not what ons data says[1]

[1] http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/rdit2/internet-access-quarterl...

To see the figure 22%, set "INDIC_IS" to "Internet use: never".

That's interesting. However, it might be more interesting with "Internet use: in the last 3 months". That's at 74%, meaning 26% didn't use it the last 3 months.

Edit: It's also interesting to sort countries by usage. The poorer countries are at around 50% internet usage. I'm surprised to see Italy way down there with 56% usage (last 3 months).

Italy has a very large elderly population.

Italy comes from 20 years of bad government and television supremacy. Also, most of our very very very old politicians are incredibly ignorant of all things digital.

I find it interesting that Greece and Italy, both of whom are in a financial crisis have some of the lowest internet uses rates it the EU. I wonder what the correlation between the economic crisis and this is.

For a post-agrarian economy like Greece where ~half the population lives in Athens? Probably quite weak.

So 22% of European people still have relative privacy. I am a bit jealous.

Is the 2400 baud modem and NC100 in a cabin in the mountains not available in the US anymore?

That might sound flippant, what I mean is when you drill into the 22% you will find it is people in remote areas with poor and expensive connectivity that make up the majority of those who do not use the Internet. Age profile might be an issue as well, although many older people are using the Web now to stay in contact with family who have moved to the cities.

I'm actually considering dumping the landline and asdl over copper broadband at home here in a large city in the UK. I get internet access at work, in the local art centre and the local library (wifi) and can keep a pay as you go mobile broadband dongle for emergency use at home. This isn't anything to do with surveillance just that we are paying hundreds of pounds a year for a land line that gets hardly any use for actual voice calls.

Almost noone I know still has a landline anymore. People usually go for cable or standalone DSL that provides the landline for a small fee but does not bill you for telephone service. Is that not an option there in the UK?

Standalone DSL sounds great, but I suspect that won't exist in UK because of the local loop belonging to OpenReach and them charging providers for access. Will look around though.

90% of Europeans, even technically illiterate, have a mobile phone, which is even worse for privacy than the iternet.

In light of this does the United Nation's decision last year that Internet Access should be a basic human right hold water considering that so many freely choose to go without it? Here's the list for comparison:

http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/

22% of European don't use ATM machines and don't have a credit card ? I don't think so.

I would think the percentage of people who don't use ATM machines and don't have a credit card is likely higher than 22%, actually. Using only cash is much more common in Europe than in the US.

This is one of those areas where you can't really generalize over "Europe" at all since it varies so much between countries. In Scandinavia, the Netherlands and the UK, card usage is extremely high. In southern and eastern Europe, not so much.

Decided to google some,

In all of EU, 40% of people have a credit card. You're right that it varies greatly throughout the countries.

The highest credit card per capita rate is in Luxembourg, with around 3 per capita (for comparison's sake, in the US it's 3.5 per capita, in most EU countries at 1 per capita).

The highest ownership rate is in Luxembourg, with 87% of people having one. The lowest is in Hungary, with only 9% of the people having a credit card.

Some other countries: Denmark 71%, Bulgaria 12%, Lithuania 16%, Romania 17%. The rest of the EU countries can be seen here, on page 13

http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_373_en.p...

Yes, credit card use is relatively low, but everybody has and uses a debit card.

As always, my country, Romania, is at the end of everything.

Definitely true, but Scandinavia, the Netherlands and the UK do have low level of credit card use, it's basically all debit cards, sometimes even using some local system. The Netherlands is ridiculous in this, when I was there is summer hardly anybody took Mastercard or Visa.

Very true, I was accidentally thinking "non-cash transactions"

Credit card use varies a lot between countries. Germany is more than 10% of Europe and they're known have low credit card use, so they might influence stats a bit.

In some areas of Warsaw there are more ATMs than places where you can actually spend money, and card usage is ridiculously high to the point where if a store doesn't accept one you're pissed and think of the place as savages (well, almost, some discount stores and 24h liquors don't have terminals). Meanwhile, in Polish rural areas there is close to no ATMs in 10km radius (made that up, don't have any data), bars and stores don't accept cc and usually you have to take an actual trip to the nearest town for the money. There is also no usage among the elderly, most of them don't trust plastic/electronic money, don't understand how it works, or aren't confident in their abilities to use it.

Many countries have an extensive debit card network and direct online payments, obviating most of the need for either.

In the Netherlands, you can pay everywhere with your debit card from any bank. Same goes for online payments.

Last time I was in Germany Burger King didn't take cards, only cash.

Happy people :)

tthis is probably more illuminating http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/submitViewTableActio...

% of people that have NEVER used the internet

I'm afraid your link is broken. Was there POST data involved?

22% still have a life then.

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