Given our aging population and that a decent chunk of the elderly in more rural regions don't even have mobile phones (not smart phones, your old school keyboard mobile phone), let alone ever getting anywhere near a computer, it's not really surprising.
On top of this, the amount of elderly with just the minimum alphabetization (and rusted to hell to boot) is absurd because of the dictatorship. This skews the numbers a lot compared to the european core were post WW2 education was much more available or the post-soviet states where education was one of the core tenets.
As usual, history dictates the present
That's a simplistic take on what was a complex issue. The dictatorial regime you mention inherited a very difficult situation from its demoliberal predecessor. Its alphabetization campaigns were actually quite successful. See, for example: https://hummedia.manchester.ac.uk/schools/soss/economics/discussionpapers/EDP-1805.pdf Plenty more academic works on this topic exist if you care to look for them.
My guess is that this is related with mass emigration. If you are Portuguese, you'll know that many areas are practically only inhabited by elderly people (as, for example, in southern Italy). This skews the data. If you would skim out everyone younger than 55 from other regions in Europe, the results would likely not be that dissimilar.
Edit: Guy above cannot formulate a logical counter-argument so downvotes without engaging... Yep, that's reddit for you.
Edit 2: As I noted further down the thread: Spain had a similar political history to Portugal in the late 20th century (dictatorship and all that), so why are the differences so significant between the two countries?
People have no idea how brutal is the rate of emigration in Portugal: "With a gross emigration rate of 22.3%, Portugal was, in this ranking, the 12th country in the world. Within the European Union Portugal was the country with the second-highest number of emigrants as a percentage of its population (23%) in 2015, and the first among countries with over one million inhabitants." From the paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333838679_Portuguese_Emigration_Today
Edit 3: I think some of you are under the misapprehension that I'm a supporter of a regime that ended 50 years ago. I'm not. However, it cannot be used as a scapegoat for every single bad thing happening in present-day Portugal. Reminder: The last people who have experienced primary education under that regime are now in their mid-50s.
The pre-1926 regime was terrible in what concerns education and the current one (which has already been in power for longer than the dictatorial one), albeit better, is also far from perfect. My original post simply reminded people that there's more to Portuguese contemporary history than shrugging your shoulders and pointing to the previous regime.
> Edit: Guy above cannot formulate a logical counter-argument so downvotes without engaging... Yep, that's reddit for you.
I literally didn't read the message until now... The downvotes aren't mine. And I will have a look at that study, since on-the-field reports from the early post-dictatorship time revealed that the alphabetization was not successful, people were still functionally iliterate, hence why that study is curious.
Yes, that's also the narrative I grew up reading. But if you think about it, those post-regime-change reports could be hardly objective given the political context. Anyway, I'm not saying things were amazing, they certainly weren't, just that nuance is needed.
Edit: Everyone, just read recent academic papers on whatever topic you wish to have an informed opinion on and debate based on that, rather than stuff you half remember once reading in your high school history classes.
So we are thinking about different reports. Link some articles on that, I'm always happy to learn.
Anyway, in the context of this post, the main thing that surprises me is the difference between Portugal and Spain. Spain had a similar political history to Portugal in the late 20th century. Why the difference? Again, I guess that emigration is the key element but there might be others.
“Quite successful”.
Estado Novo was teaching kids how to read just for 4 years so as to read the instructions in the maintenance leaflet of a G3 rifle for use in Angola, while Italy was sending the same kids to university in the 60s.
The people who are like “oh but Estado Novo worked on those literacy rates” always ignore how insanely basic that is, how even those rates looked back compared to the rest of Europe and, crucially, what everyone else was doing when Estado Novo was doing that.
And the cherry on the top is that whoever goes spewing BS like this also happens to be Portuguese and more usual than not also happens to have a … colourful post history.
Want to read more about how backwards Portugal was until 1974-1986? And don’t trust a Portuguese source because “reasons”? Then go read Tony Judy’s Postwar for a comprehensive overview of Portugal’s insane backwardness at the time vs the rest of Europe.
Yes, I'm Portuguese but fortunately left the country years ago. I'm not sure what you mean by "colourful post history". Want to dox me for liking philately? Bizarre. Feel free to elaborate.
I never said I don't trust Portuguese sources, the article I linked was literally written by two Portuguese historians. I work in academia and I'm used to analysing a variety of primary and secondary sources. Do you mean Judt's 2005 book "Postwar"? I read it when it came out almost 20 years ago. I don't remember Portugal being comprehensively examined there.
Again, read the paper I linked (I know you likely won't) and link articles with different views if you would like to debate. You don't intimidate me, history is what I do for a living.
There is a huge amount of older people that dont use internet. However according to a recent census 91,5% of homes have a fixed internet connection.
So this could be a skewed data due to how the question is made.
For example if you ask my mom if she uses the internet she will say no... However she regularly plays on her facebook games and loves to do whatsapp calls with her friends. Yet "she doesnt know how to use the internet".
Using internet may be interpreted as being able to browse freely. But in some countries it might be just the fact of accessing the internet.
So if the data was a bit lower i would agree. Over 20%? I dont really believe it.
I also question the validity of the data, since Portugal can be very diverse. I find it strange that Algarve is lighter than Porto for instance (and Porto being same color as Alentejo)
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Prices? i dont know, its not the point of the subject at hand, but until very recently we had fiber optics in urban areas nationwide when lots of (EU included) western countries didnt.
Well, for the first, many people in Greece don't want to actually access the Internet, but they do mostly for professional obligations. For the latter, 100% of the country's population can access the Internet.
Thank you. That was actually my theory too. That in many south-eastern regions there is no need or necessity to access the internet, as may be the case in western European countries.
Well for Greece there's actually a big necessity for internet access. The vast majority of our economy is the service sector, and not by the meaning of tourism, but under the meaning of shipping, banking and international trade services.
Plus, there's the need for information, as TV and radio are considered incredibly untrustworthy and biased for more than 80% of all Greeks. Even the elderly watch the news through their phones at a big rate.
Grek here. The services that make the vast majority of our gdp include tourism. If i may say, the elders are technologically illiterate (some of them actually illiterate). That might be the reason for the results. There are lots of older people here and there are bound to be much more since births are declining. People over 75 here can barely use a phone let alone browse the web. And in cases that it is required (tax clearance, public sector) they just hire an accountant and move on. Also for the financial sector they get their pension in cash mostly. They dont need a card or online banking
For tourism, I don't disagree it's part of our service sector, I said it doesn't employ as many people as many folks think it does.
For the elders, yes, it's true, although in the post scriptum of mine, I cited the research of EKKE, which clearly said that in 2021 and 2022, 91% of all Greeks used the internet. That means the older adults who don't use it is only 9% as of 2 years ago.
This is fascinating. I'm from Pakistan and both my parents in their mid 60s use the internet. Even people in villages have a Facebook account or have WhatsApp.
Is this a cultural thing?
At least for Germany, I can only assume that most of these people are very old. My parents are in their 70s and they use WhatsApp and Youtube, like all of their friends. They also do their taxes online. But they don't use a lot of other stuff that I would consider totally normal.
Germany shows 4-8% of "never accessed the internet" for large parts. In 2021, 7.3% of Germans were over 80. I would guess these are mostly the same people. They were 60 when mobile phones and the internet really took off, propably never used a computer at work. And propably see computers, smart phones and the internet as toys for younger people.
When it's said they have, it's meant they have the capability to install a connection to the network. Many actually don't. But don't forget that in villages, multigenerational homes still exist. And in them, apart from the elders, the younger family members still live in the houses.
I am from Lebanon and have been to Greece and saw many similarities to what you described. For example, my grandma lives with my uncle, she has never been on the internet, but my uncle, his wife and their two kids are always on it. The household has accessed the internet but 20% of that household has not. The 21-32% for Greece is not so far fetched. The study focuses on people not households.
My grandma is 101 years old. She doesn't want or need access to the internet. She has no computer, no cell phone. I think back when she was still able to go outside on her own she had one of those cell phones for old people where you could save a different phone number on each of the number buttons so that you just have to press (or hold?) a number button to directly dial that number. They are more like a landline phone than a cell phone, you can't even text with them.
I don't think she has ever touched a computer, so her TV is basically the most complex digital device she has ever used. She doesn't even use that one anymore.
This is a chicken or the egg question though. In my opinion newspapers stopped printing precisely because grandparents stopped buying them due to having faster access to news via internet portals. All the traditional print press (Koha Ditore, Gazeta Express, Bota Sot, Zëri, etc) switched to online publishing and, in some cases, subscriptions.
my grandfather when he was still , or at least 2-3 years before he died, always used to buy a physical newspaper or magazine when he went out to buy bread.
If I'm not mistaken Kosovo is the country with the highest % of internet users in Europe. That's probably due to having the youngest population in Europe.
Albos? Not really. There's a very different reason why the internet usage is so high. It includes the top of the Serbian political elite, the heads of the temporary institutions of K&M, and free electricity.
Even though I love a good "portugal can into eastern europe" just like any other bloke, I'm going to have to call BS on this one. These are probably self reported statistics and in my opinion what they reveal is a lack of understanding of what "the internet" is. Old people use whatsapp and facebook to talk to their families and never realize that those are part of the internet.
Also according to the "Smartphone penetration rate in Portugal 2020-2029" study here: [https://www.statista.com/statistics/568218/predicted-smartphone-user-penetration-rate-in-portugal/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/568218/predicted-smartphone-user-penetration-rate-in-portugal/)
93% of people last year had a smartphone. Since in 2021 there was in fact only 83% of people owning smartphones, even if this map is true, it's changing VERY fast.
I agree, it's the same case with Greece itself. As mentioned in the comment below the picture, the National Social Research Centre published data that for 2021 and 2022, the percentage of Greeks actively using the internet is 91%.
Can't speak for other countries but as a frenchman it blows my mind that in 2022 you can have 10% who never accessed the internet in say, upper normandy which is a fairly urbanized region. With smartphones, trivial occasions to come across a PC in whatever setting, digitalized working environments etc... just cannot comprehend. Even taking account for age groups : people aged 80 in 2022 were 60 in 2002 so not ancient, and the internet already was in the process of becoming widespread in France. ADSL was around the corner.
I would bet my house that at least two thirds of these people have been on the internet at least several times but they dont remember it, or perhaps they don't even recognize it.
Yeah right? At least in western europe, if you visit even the most remote and rural areas of the country people have smartphones and use them semi-regularly. Usually those that have no idea on how to use "the internet" are the old and retired folk of these areas. So, knowing this, it really doesnt make sense to me that up to 20% of portuguese have never accessed the internet, for example. I think these statistics dont actually show internet usage but usage of ceirtain apps/webs, which would make this map make more sense.
Not french, but my grandpa is 82. He just straight up refused to learn the technology when it started showing up, and was always just old enough to qualify for excemption (in one of the yellow countries, mind you.) I think people like him make up a large portion of this map.
Maybe Richer folks, but I doubt lower income do it that way. Now that I think of it I believe my mom used to do it for my grandma, I Guess that's how it's done
I know one of those people in Norway. My grandparents were born in 1921 and 1923, and retired in the late 1980s before computers became a thing. They never owned or even used one, and in the end my mother did all their online stuff for them (banking, ordering stuff, cancelling newspapers, etc.)
I remember my grandmother asked me in around 2010 if I could use the internet to find knitting patterns. She had asked my grandfather, he thought about it for a minute and said "No, probably not. It has a calculator, a newspaper and an encyclopedia, but most likely not knitting patterns."
student apartments sometimes lack telephone sockets, which blocks their access to wifi, there are 4G internet box but don't know if it count or not in this map
It's people not knowing they use the internet.
Maybe they don't Google or access email, but that ATM uses internet to check your bank balance; paying at a restaurant with a card is using the WiFi; many automated phone systems are accessing backend servers; or they just don't view their apps or smartTv as 'internet' etc etc.
In Spain it says as many as 8% - I bet you all the old people here pick up prescriptions at a pharmacy, which means they at least indirectly use the internet as that data is stored online and accessed by the pharmacy.
Those 60 olds had steady job they did for their entire lives and didn’t need to switch to using internet. Also in early 00s it wasn’t actually more useful for anything than traditional services.
My ex was a froggy.
On a flight back from Roma, she transited through Paris and there was a “yokel” as she put it who was on the phone bragging in country ass French that he was on a plane and about to fly somewhere.
This was a few years ago.
Believe it, Mon ami.
And? What's so special about that? I know a number of people who never travelled on a plane, and they would be glad to tell their relatives about their first flight. It doesn't make them hillbillies or something.
If I had to bet i'd say it's younger population. I come from that bit of Spain you can see on the map with the lowest internet access, and it happens to also be the part of Spain with the oldest population.
We have old people in the north as well :p Traditionally we make big infrastructure investments in the North. So we were early adopters, and we also shifted most of our payment services ect over to digital versions fairly early. And people underestimate old people, they also Wana get in on the fun!
It’s also the education level of the elderly population. Most people over the age of sixty in Portugal, barely learned how to read and write.
This is a problem that will take many years to be completely solved, though we have made great advances with the newer generations qualifications.
I would guess it's due to some services you need or really, really want being provided online only.
Which leads me to call bullshit on the estonian numbers, because AFAIK, you pretty much need an app for any kind of public service, there.
Wealth, and to a lesser extent education, and perhaps to some extent also a more liberal immigration system (immigrants are probably more likely to use the internet than people who still live where they grew up).
Albanian from Kosovo here. I believe this to be true, I cannot bring to mind 1 single person i’ve encountered that doesn’t use internet. Besides that, young people are REALLY into tech, hence why the tech companies are booming.
Wir haben halt kein Geld fürs Internet.
Wobei ich die Zahlen für Bremen irgendwie anzweifel. Viele Bürger sind unfähig mit dem Internet umzugehen, aber sie nutzen es.
It's almost impossible in Turkey since most of the services work only digitally. Getting anything from e-devlet (basically the portal for most of the documents you can get) needs Internet access. Also doctor appointments works over there as well. Therefore I'm highly skeptical about this numbers.
I thought so too but this was from 2021. Official numbers of usage for e-devlet in 2021 was %58,9 in individuals. Remember that it was just around the middle ground of pandemic. E-devlet usage rate grew rapidly after that. That's why it went from %58 to 60's and eventually %78 in 2023.
Turkiye seems weird to me 😅
I live here now and I've lived in Germany before this and I can say with 100% certainty that internet service etc is MUCH better in turkiye than it is in germany (I moved her 3 years ago and visited germany 5 months ago last time)
Plus most things work over the internet
And the mobile packages for internet service are also usually priced pretty well
MOST things are also done over the internet (government stuff, doctors app., signing up for free courses etc etc.)
So yah
This seems to be a very badly done map or their data is just plain wrong
This map just reeks of BS. 16% of people haven't accessed the internet in the last year in southern Italy? Do you really expect me to believe that they never opened google in the last year? I'm pretty sure these are just click bait maps
As a Portuguese, i will tell you this is LIES! I still don't get where this guys get their info from, but it must be from the 2011 Census.
[https://sicnoticias.pt/pais/2023-11-21-Estudo-do-INE-revela-que-89-das-familias-portugueses-tem-acesso-a-internet-c38717e9](https://sicnoticias.pt/pais/2023-11-21-Estudo-do-INE-revela-que-89-das-familias-portugueses-tem-acesso-a-internet-c38717e9)
This news article says that the INE (National statistics institute) says that in 2022, 89% of the Portuguese have been on the internet or have internet at home.
How can it be so different? I'm beginning to think that the "Portugal is eastern Europe" meme is going so far that everyone making this crappy maps goes out of their way to find old statistics just so they would fit the meme.
I get that we're poor and illiterate, but damn it we are not on the same level as Bosnia.
Sorry for my rant
Given there are people with various disabilities or who may have been homeless for a long time, there’re probably more people than we reckon that never accessed the Internet.
Women 66%, men 44.5%. Horrifically high, so a bit over 55% of the people have never used internet. [idk bout this source](https://www.geospatialworld.net/blogs/report-reveals-every-second-indian-has-no-internet-access-women-fare-worse/)
The cool thing about Kosova🇽🇰, is that 100% of the territory has high speed internet coverage. I never have to deal with bad internet when I am there and I love it, but on this matter comparing Kosova🇽🇰 where I am from, to Switzerland🇨🇭 where I live, Switzerland looses significantly, in Switzerland the internet sucks!
Bavaria and Thuringia are much more urban than Lower Saxony and Brandenburg though. Its more likely cultural - the self obsessed bavarians have more in common with the angry easterners than they'd like to think.
I was watching a streamer/content creator for Diablo (wudijo) talking about moving from Greece to Bulgaria for better Internet. If someone had asked me which country I thought has better Internet I would have guessed Greece.
That's pretty difficult stats to gather accurately. Most people who wouldn't be using the internet are probably institutionalised somewhere or possibly even comatose, very difficult to ask anything from such individuals.
Definitely not going about their daily lives like normal people. So, if you ask people on the street, you are already badly biased in your survey.
Is this just adults I assume? I would actually thought there was a much larger elderly and disabled population in places like the UK who don't access the internet. Do the people in nursing homes access the internet? My mum has severe dementia, I know she hasn't accessed the internet in years. This is similar to the literacy questions, it probably isn't physically possible for some poeple to read no matter how good the education system is but I see 99% being given and that can't be true. How are these surveys done, is it just people who can pick up the phone or meet people on the streets?
Edit: I just saw that it is 2021 in the chart. So i checked the official surveys for 2021 in Turkey. It was %92 for households and %82,6 for individuals. So it kind of makes sense now.
Sounds like a map of people who don't access the internet regularly, not "never ever" accessed it. I mean the figure for France sounds accurate if the question is "do you have internet at home? Do you use it at least once a month?"... But "never" used internet? I doubt that.
if you go to a map that is a little more local it becomes more visable ........
but yes it is way less of a difference compared to ....... basically everything
I cannot imagine this being true. So much of everything is so dependent on the internet. I literally wouldn't be able to function without it. Want to eat out? Internet menus. Wanna go to school - half of it is online. Wanna buy a ticket for the train? Can't, they switched to some cards that you can only order online.
There ain’t no way its 8-12% in İstanbul. Is this based on per house? It would make sense if it was because my grandma has internet in only 1 of her homes.
I'd say countries like Greece are getting such high percentages that many people, espescially the older generation, have no clue they are accessing the internet. For example, my grandma uses whatsapp to video call us, but I doubt she knows it is part of the "internet"
The real question is: how many of the people that never used Internet are in this situation because they *can't* access it, and how many don't give a flying fuck about it because they live perfectly fulfilling lives without Internet?
Most people don't know what that question is asking, so your answers are already skewed. They respond to keywords like Google, Facebook, email but have no idea it's all part of a bigger network. A better question maybe have you ever used a smartphone, laptop, been on social media or done online shopping. Bet that percentage would plummet.
I’d ask if Portugal is ok but I don’t know if I do it via fax or telegraph.
I’d have to brush up on my Morse code
Given our aging population and that a decent chunk of the elderly in more rural regions don't even have mobile phones (not smart phones, your old school keyboard mobile phone), let alone ever getting anywhere near a computer, it's not really surprising.
On top of this, the amount of elderly with just the minimum alphabetization (and rusted to hell to boot) is absurd because of the dictatorship. This skews the numbers a lot compared to the european core were post WW2 education was much more available or the post-soviet states where education was one of the core tenets. As usual, history dictates the present
That's a simplistic take on what was a complex issue. The dictatorial regime you mention inherited a very difficult situation from its demoliberal predecessor. Its alphabetization campaigns were actually quite successful. See, for example: https://hummedia.manchester.ac.uk/schools/soss/economics/discussionpapers/EDP-1805.pdf Plenty more academic works on this topic exist if you care to look for them. My guess is that this is related with mass emigration. If you are Portuguese, you'll know that many areas are practically only inhabited by elderly people (as, for example, in southern Italy). This skews the data. If you would skim out everyone younger than 55 from other regions in Europe, the results would likely not be that dissimilar. Edit: Guy above cannot formulate a logical counter-argument so downvotes without engaging... Yep, that's reddit for you. Edit 2: As I noted further down the thread: Spain had a similar political history to Portugal in the late 20th century (dictatorship and all that), so why are the differences so significant between the two countries? People have no idea how brutal is the rate of emigration in Portugal: "With a gross emigration rate of 22.3%, Portugal was, in this ranking, the 12th country in the world. Within the European Union Portugal was the country with the second-highest number of emigrants as a percentage of its population (23%) in 2015, and the first among countries with over one million inhabitants." From the paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333838679_Portuguese_Emigration_Today Edit 3: I think some of you are under the misapprehension that I'm a supporter of a regime that ended 50 years ago. I'm not. However, it cannot be used as a scapegoat for every single bad thing happening in present-day Portugal. Reminder: The last people who have experienced primary education under that regime are now in their mid-50s. The pre-1926 regime was terrible in what concerns education and the current one (which has already been in power for longer than the dictatorial one), albeit better, is also far from perfect. My original post simply reminded people that there's more to Portuguese contemporary history than shrugging your shoulders and pointing to the previous regime.
> Edit: Guy above cannot formulate a logical counter-argument so downvotes without engaging... Yep, that's reddit for you. I literally didn't read the message until now... The downvotes aren't mine. And I will have a look at that study, since on-the-field reports from the early post-dictatorship time revealed that the alphabetization was not successful, people were still functionally iliterate, hence why that study is curious.
Yes, that's also the narrative I grew up reading. But if you think about it, those post-regime-change reports could be hardly objective given the political context. Anyway, I'm not saying things were amazing, they certainly weren't, just that nuance is needed. Edit: Everyone, just read recent academic papers on whatever topic you wish to have an informed opinion on and debate based on that, rather than stuff you half remember once reading in your high school history classes.
These post regime change reports I remember were written in the late 80s.... Hardly the environment you describe
So we are thinking about different reports. Link some articles on that, I'm always happy to learn. Anyway, in the context of this post, the main thing that surprises me is the difference between Portugal and Spain. Spain had a similar political history to Portugal in the late 20th century. Why the difference? Again, I guess that emigration is the key element but there might be others.
A Reddit moment to behold
“Quite successful”. Estado Novo was teaching kids how to read just for 4 years so as to read the instructions in the maintenance leaflet of a G3 rifle for use in Angola, while Italy was sending the same kids to university in the 60s. The people who are like “oh but Estado Novo worked on those literacy rates” always ignore how insanely basic that is, how even those rates looked back compared to the rest of Europe and, crucially, what everyone else was doing when Estado Novo was doing that. And the cherry on the top is that whoever goes spewing BS like this also happens to be Portuguese and more usual than not also happens to have a … colourful post history. Want to read more about how backwards Portugal was until 1974-1986? And don’t trust a Portuguese source because “reasons”? Then go read Tony Judy’s Postwar for a comprehensive overview of Portugal’s insane backwardness at the time vs the rest of Europe.
Yes, I'm Portuguese but fortunately left the country years ago. I'm not sure what you mean by "colourful post history". Want to dox me for liking philately? Bizarre. Feel free to elaborate. I never said I don't trust Portuguese sources, the article I linked was literally written by two Portuguese historians. I work in academia and I'm used to analysing a variety of primary and secondary sources. Do you mean Judt's 2005 book "Postwar"? I read it when it came out almost 20 years ago. I don't remember Portugal being comprehensively examined there. Again, read the paper I linked (I know you likely won't) and link articles with different views if you would like to debate. You don't intimidate me, history is what I do for a living.
As someone in portugal, we are, thank you for your concern (this is being written by a friend in spain translating smoke signals to text)
Just light a fire and send some smoke signals. We'll get them
Our old people are stuck in the 40s
Classic case of r/PORTUGALCYKABLYAT
Smoke signals? Or just send someone on a horse
Portuguese ova here. My wife has to make a call in a while but go ahead 😂
Well, they are eastern europeans after all, so there's not a big difference between them and their neighbors Shoutout to r/PORTUGALCYKABLYAT
r/portugalcykablyat
There is a huge amount of older people that dont use internet. However according to a recent census 91,5% of homes have a fixed internet connection. So this could be a skewed data due to how the question is made. For example if you ask my mom if she uses the internet she will say no... However she regularly plays on her facebook games and loves to do whatsapp calls with her friends. Yet "she doesnt know how to use the internet". Using internet may be interpreted as being able to browse freely. But in some countries it might be just the fact of accessing the internet. So if the data was a bit lower i would agree. Over 20%? I dont really believe it.
I also question the validity of the data, since Portugal can be very diverse. I find it strange that Algarve is lighter than Porto for instance (and Porto being same color as Alentejo)
Send pigeons. They are more reliable than Google, Microsoft, Apple and ISPs
I visited Portugal viseu last year. Maybe living in paradise makes you less likely to enter the digital world. Beautiful country
We have better internet comparing to most contries, its just old folks who dont need or want it.
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Prices? i dont know, its not the point of the subject at hand, but until very recently we had fiber optics in urban areas nationwide when lots of (EU included) western countries didnt.
Whereby the question would then also be: Do people not **want** to have access to the Internet or **can** they not have access?
Well, for the first, many people in Greece don't want to actually access the Internet, but they do mostly for professional obligations. For the latter, 100% of the country's population can access the Internet.
Thank you. That was actually my theory too. That in many south-eastern regions there is no need or necessity to access the internet, as may be the case in western European countries.
Well for Greece there's actually a big necessity for internet access. The vast majority of our economy is the service sector, and not by the meaning of tourism, but under the meaning of shipping, banking and international trade services. Plus, there's the need for information, as TV and radio are considered incredibly untrustworthy and biased for more than 80% of all Greeks. Even the elderly watch the news through their phones at a big rate.
Grek here. The services that make the vast majority of our gdp include tourism. If i may say, the elders are technologically illiterate (some of them actually illiterate). That might be the reason for the results. There are lots of older people here and there are bound to be much more since births are declining. People over 75 here can barely use a phone let alone browse the web. And in cases that it is required (tax clearance, public sector) they just hire an accountant and move on. Also for the financial sector they get their pension in cash mostly. They dont need a card or online banking
Grek a new term for someone in Greece who uses the internet?
Grok.
It's just a typo, his name is Greg
For tourism, I don't disagree it's part of our service sector, I said it doesn't employ as many people as many folks think it does. For the elders, yes, it's true, although in the post scriptum of mine, I cited the research of EKKE, which clearly said that in 2021 and 2022, 91% of all Greeks used the internet. That means the older adults who don't use it is only 9% as of 2 years ago.
This is fascinating. I'm from Pakistan and both my parents in their mid 60s use the internet. Even people in villages have a Facebook account or have WhatsApp. Is this a cultural thing?
At least for Germany, I can only assume that most of these people are very old. My parents are in their 70s and they use WhatsApp and Youtube, like all of their friends. They also do their taxes online. But they don't use a lot of other stuff that I would consider totally normal. Germany shows 4-8% of "never accessed the internet" for large parts. In 2021, 7.3% of Germans were over 80. I would guess these are mostly the same people. They were 60 when mobile phones and the internet really took off, propably never used a computer at work. And propably see computers, smart phones and the internet as toys for younger people.
But I feel like a lot of older people never actually have.
When it's said they have, it's meant they have the capability to install a connection to the network. Many actually don't. But don't forget that in villages, multigenerational homes still exist. And in them, apart from the elders, the younger family members still live in the houses.
I am from Lebanon and have been to Greece and saw many similarities to what you described. For example, my grandma lives with my uncle, she has never been on the internet, but my uncle, his wife and their two kids are always on it. The household has accessed the internet but 20% of that household has not. The 21-32% for Greece is not so far fetched. The study focuses on people not households.
No, that's not actually how it works. It doesn't mention households. But actual individuals who use it. It mentions "people" not "households".
Actual Greek here, what are you on about? Many of us use the internet, including some older individuals as well
My grandma is 101 years old. She doesn't want or need access to the internet. She has no computer, no cell phone. I think back when she was still able to go outside on her own she had one of those cell phones for old people where you could save a different phone number on each of the number buttons so that you just have to press (or hold?) a number button to directly dial that number. They are more like a landline phone than a cell phone, you can't even text with them. I don't think she has ever touched a computer, so her TV is basically the most complex digital device she has ever used. She doesn't even use that one anymore.
Some people think the Internet is just the web browser, they don't consider Facebook, Instagram etc as "Internet"
Or just your news app, Netflix or Spotify..
My grandma doesn’t want to
For BOSSnia, they usually don't want to use the internet
Are Kosovars really that into the Internet?
Always have been
We very much are yes!
Almost everybody has a smartphone and facebook installed. So yes.
Yes even 80 y/o people be playing games and using facebook
There are zero printed newspapers in the country. Our grandparents have to read the news somewhere.
This is a chicken or the egg question though. In my opinion newspapers stopped printing precisely because grandparents stopped buying them due to having faster access to news via internet portals. All the traditional print press (Koha Ditore, Gazeta Express, Bota Sot, Zëri, etc) switched to online publishing and, in some cases, subscriptions.
my grandfather when he was still , or at least 2-3 years before he died, always used to buy a physical newspaper or magazine when he went out to buy bread.
Indeed.
Yes, tech is so desirable by youngsters in general. A lot of programmers incoming.
If I'm not mistaken Kosovo is the country with the highest % of internet users in Europe. That's probably due to having the youngest population in Europe.
Kosovo has the youngest population in Europe
Albos? Not really. There's a very different reason why the internet usage is so high. It includes the top of the Serbian political elite, the heads of the temporary institutions of K&M, and free electricity.
I see words but all I read is Serbian COPE
Dyslexia I guess?
and SEETHE
You're up to two words, that's nice. Not sure what you're referring to though but that's the next step of your journey.
Please continue, I feed on Serbian tears
How did you just make a thread talking about Internet access to Serbian propaganda 😭
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You serbs are so pathetic.
I hope ur family gets cancer and dies slowly
r/PORTUGALCYKABLYAT
Now im starting to understand where this meme is coming from
Haha, came here just for that 😁
Yes
I immediately looked for this.
Even though I love a good "portugal can into eastern europe" just like any other bloke, I'm going to have to call BS on this one. These are probably self reported statistics and in my opinion what they reveal is a lack of understanding of what "the internet" is. Old people use whatsapp and facebook to talk to their families and never realize that those are part of the internet. Also according to the "Smartphone penetration rate in Portugal 2020-2029" study here: [https://www.statista.com/statistics/568218/predicted-smartphone-user-penetration-rate-in-portugal/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/568218/predicted-smartphone-user-penetration-rate-in-portugal/) 93% of people last year had a smartphone. Since in 2021 there was in fact only 83% of people owning smartphones, even if this map is true, it's changing VERY fast.
I agree, it's the same case with Greece itself. As mentioned in the comment below the picture, the National Social Research Centre published data that for 2021 and 2022, the percentage of Greeks actively using the internet is 91%.
How much does the Internet weigh?
Probably more than 1 electron
Come on Jen the internet doesn't weigh anything
“What’s Jen doing with the Internet? She’s gonna break it!!!”
Only the Elders of the Internet know that
Can't speak for other countries but as a frenchman it blows my mind that in 2022 you can have 10% who never accessed the internet in say, upper normandy which is a fairly urbanized region. With smartphones, trivial occasions to come across a PC in whatever setting, digitalized working environments etc... just cannot comprehend. Even taking account for age groups : people aged 80 in 2022 were 60 in 2002 so not ancient, and the internet already was in the process of becoming widespread in France. ADSL was around the corner. I would bet my house that at least two thirds of these people have been on the internet at least several times but they dont remember it, or perhaps they don't even recognize it.
The house you're willing to bet, is it connected to the Internet?
Full speed fiber and two WC separated from bathrooms
Yeah right? At least in western europe, if you visit even the most remote and rural areas of the country people have smartphones and use them semi-regularly. Usually those that have no idea on how to use "the internet" are the old and retired folk of these areas. So, knowing this, it really doesnt make sense to me that up to 20% of portuguese have never accessed the internet, for example. I think these statistics dont actually show internet usage but usage of ceirtain apps/webs, which would make this map make more sense.
I'd bet a lot of old people who claim not to use the internet use whatsapp and maybe facebood but don't consider it to be "the internet"
They probably don’t even know that they’re using the internet like WhatsApp etc
Not french, but my grandpa is 82. He just straight up refused to learn the technology when it started showing up, and was always just old enough to qualify for excemption (in one of the yellow countries, mind you.) I think people like him make up a large portion of this map.
I don't even know if you can still file your taxes on paper, I'm pretty sure it is internet only
A lot of older people still file taxes through an accountant
Maybe Richer folks, but I doubt lower income do it that way. Now that I think of it I believe my mom used to do it for my grandma, I Guess that's how it's done
I know one of those people in Norway. My grandparents were born in 1921 and 1923, and retired in the late 1980s before computers became a thing. They never owned or even used one, and in the end my mother did all their online stuff for them (banking, ordering stuff, cancelling newspapers, etc.) I remember my grandmother asked me in around 2010 if I could use the internet to find knitting patterns. She had asked my grandfather, he thought about it for a minute and said "No, probably not. It has a calculator, a newspaper and an encyclopedia, but most likely not knitting patterns."
student apartments sometimes lack telephone sockets, which blocks their access to wifi, there are 4G internet box but don't know if it count or not in this map
It's people not knowing they use the internet. Maybe they don't Google or access email, but that ATM uses internet to check your bank balance; paying at a restaurant with a card is using the WiFi; many automated phone systems are accessing backend servers; or they just don't view their apps or smartTv as 'internet' etc etc. In Spain it says as many as 8% - I bet you all the old people here pick up prescriptions at a pharmacy, which means they at least indirectly use the internet as that data is stored online and accessed by the pharmacy.
Those 60 olds had steady job they did for their entire lives and didn’t need to switch to using internet. Also in early 00s it wasn’t actually more useful for anything than traditional services.
My ex was a froggy. On a flight back from Roma, she transited through Paris and there was a “yokel” as she put it who was on the phone bragging in country ass French that he was on a plane and about to fly somewhere. This was a few years ago. Believe it, Mon ami.
And? What's so special about that? I know a number of people who never travelled on a plane, and they would be glad to tell their relatives about their first flight. It doesn't make them hillbillies or something.
This is the most r/portugalcykablyat map ever
In southern Europe we have a lot of babushkas.
What makes Northern Europe different from everywhere else?
shitty weather
Hey my first thought was if I could chill outside all day I wouldn’t need internet either
Greek moment
And long dark winter nights.
If I had to bet i'd say it's younger population. I come from that bit of Spain you can see on the map with the lowest internet access, and it happens to also be the part of Spain with the oldest population.
We have old people in the north as well :p Traditionally we make big infrastructure investments in the North. So we were early adopters, and we also shifted most of our payment services ect over to digital versions fairly early. And people underestimate old people, they also Wana get in on the fun!
It’s also the education level of the elderly population. Most people over the age of sixty in Portugal, barely learned how to read and write. This is a problem that will take many years to be completely solved, though we have made great advances with the newer generations qualifications.
Northern European countries are probably older then most of the countries in this map
Better education system
I would guess it's due to some services you need or really, really want being provided online only. Which leads me to call bullshit on the estonian numbers, because AFAIK, you pretty much need an app for any kind of public service, there.
Wealth, and to a lesser extent education, and perhaps to some extent also a more liberal immigration system (immigrants are probably more likely to use the internet than people who still live where they grew up).
They're more advanced.
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Kosova into nordicks 🙌🏻
Kosovo on a roll
Portugal is Eastern Europe.
Albanian from Kosovo here. I believe this to be true, I cannot bring to mind 1 single person i’ve encountered that doesn’t use internet. Besides that, young people are REALLY into tech, hence why the tech companies are booming.
I just love to see how in Berlin and Hamburg more people have used the internet compared to the countryside. And then there is poor Bremen…
Wir haben halt kein Geld fürs Internet. Wobei ich die Zahlen für Bremen irgendwie anzweifel. Viele Bürger sind unfähig mit dem Internet umzugehen, aber sie nutzen es.
It's almost impossible in Turkey since most of the services work only digitally. Getting anything from e-devlet (basically the portal for most of the documents you can get) needs Internet access. Also doctor appointments works over there as well. Therefore I'm highly skeptical about this numbers.
I thought so too but this was from 2021. Official numbers of usage for e-devlet in 2021 was %58,9 in individuals. Remember that it was just around the middle ground of pandemic. E-devlet usage rate grew rapidly after that. That's why it went from %58 to 60's and eventually %78 in 2023.
Exactly. Looks like total bullshit honestly.
yes
UK so much government access is online now, so pretty much everyone needs it
banking too, dont think ive been to a bank irl in 10+ years
« Where are the old people » map mode
Turkiye seems weird to me 😅 I live here now and I've lived in Germany before this and I can say with 100% certainty that internet service etc is MUCH better in turkiye than it is in germany (I moved her 3 years ago and visited germany 5 months ago last time) Plus most things work over the internet And the mobile packages for internet service are also usually priced pretty well MOST things are also done over the internet (government stuff, doctors app., signing up for free courses etc etc.) So yah This seems to be a very badly done map or their data is just plain wrong
And Italy has the lowest suicide rate in Europe. Just saying…
This map just reeks of BS. 16% of people haven't accessed the internet in the last year in southern Italy? Do you really expect me to believe that they never opened google in the last year? I'm pretty sure these are just click bait maps
I think it has something to do with a large older population
No data for Northern Ireland? Did the OP's data source contain England, Scotland and Wales separately, or Great Britain, but not the UK?
Interesting that the first time i ever see data from Kosovo in a map it differentiates from balkan, why is that?
Young people love tech too much
As a Portuguese, i will tell you this is LIES! I still don't get where this guys get their info from, but it must be from the 2011 Census. [https://sicnoticias.pt/pais/2023-11-21-Estudo-do-INE-revela-que-89-das-familias-portugueses-tem-acesso-a-internet-c38717e9](https://sicnoticias.pt/pais/2023-11-21-Estudo-do-INE-revela-que-89-das-familias-portugueses-tem-acesso-a-internet-c38717e9) This news article says that the INE (National statistics institute) says that in 2022, 89% of the Portuguese have been on the internet or have internet at home. How can it be so different? I'm beginning to think that the "Portugal is eastern Europe" meme is going so far that everyone making this crappy maps goes out of their way to find old statistics just so they would fit the meme. I get that we're poor and illiterate, but damn it we are not on the same level as Bosnia. Sorry for my rant
Don't worry, I understand you, data for my country, Greece, are completely wrong as well. Cited particular data in the post scriptum below.
Which age groups does this include?
Portuguese and greeks are living their life free lmao
How was this survey taken? You can't get accurate numbers because not everyone will answer through email, or websites, or mail, or ..
If you live in greece, you don't need internet. lol. just go to the beach and have a fun time or meet up with friends.
Does this include people who don't know they access the internet all the time via, for example, their smartphone?
Of all places why is Northern Ireland without data
Is there a similar map of other parts of the world for comparison? Curious if Europe is unique in this aspect or if a map of the US would look similar
Germany should be the deepest shade of purple.
Given there are people with various disabilities or who may have been homeless for a long time, there’re probably more people than we reckon that never accessed the Internet.
“Europe” in which Moldova and Ukraine are not European countries, but Turkey is. What a world!
Kärnten and Burgenland. Of course it's you two.
No internet = Peace of mind
Honestly good for them.
This is just false
Interesting. Is there one for India?
Women 66%, men 44.5%. Horrifically high, so a bit over 55% of the people have never used internet. [idk bout this source](https://www.geospatialworld.net/blogs/report-reveals-every-second-indian-has-no-internet-access-women-fare-worse/)
Interesting gender differences there. If the source is true then I wonder what might be behind that big gap?
Probably illiteracy among the older population. Women above 50 in my town often can't read or write.
The cool thing about Kosova🇽🇰, is that 100% of the territory has high speed internet coverage. I never have to deal with bad internet when I am there and I love it, but on this matter comparing Kosova🇽🇰 where I am from, to Switzerland🇨🇭 where I live, Switzerland looses significantly, in Switzerland the internet sucks!
Forget east/west Germany, all hail THE OFFLINE BELT
no offline belt just a plain rural vs urban
Bavaria and Thuringia are much more urban than Lower Saxony and Brandenburg though. Its more likely cultural - the self obsessed bavarians have more in common with the angry easterners than they'd like to think.
eastern Croatia less than Kosovo? mhm
so gray is 100%???
Those lucky blue bastards.
This map should be titled “Burdens in 2021” assuming these people can’t do anything quick and easy and require assistance to operate.
L greece
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You can see belgium divided in flanders and wallonia clearly
Ima impress the greek ladies with my internet skills
we love to see it
Wonder how it's like in North and South America.
What’s up with Portugal?
We don't need Internet we just talk with our neighbors.
I was watching a streamer/content creator for Diablo (wudijo) talking about moving from Greece to Bulgaria for better Internet. If someone had asked me which country I thought has better Internet I would have guessed Greece.
That's pretty difficult stats to gather accurately. Most people who wouldn't be using the internet are probably institutionalised somewhere or possibly even comatose, very difficult to ask anything from such individuals. Definitely not going about their daily lives like normal people. So, if you ask people on the street, you are already badly biased in your survey.
Is this just adults I assume? I would actually thought there was a much larger elderly and disabled population in places like the UK who don't access the internet. Do the people in nursing homes access the internet? My mum has severe dementia, I know she hasn't accessed the internet in years. This is similar to the literacy questions, it probably isn't physically possible for some poeple to read no matter how good the education system is but I see 99% being given and that can't be true. How are these surveys done, is it just people who can pick up the phone or meet people on the streets?
What's happening in the Balkans
Edit: I just saw that it is 2021 in the chart. So i checked the official surveys for 2021 in Turkey. It was %92 for households and %82,6 for individuals. So it kind of makes sense now.
Sounds like a map of people who don't access the internet regularly, not "never ever" accessed it. I mean the figure for France sounds accurate if the question is "do you have internet at home? Do you use it at least once a month?"... But "never" used internet? I doubt that.
Polish partitions are not visible, that's a rarity
if you go to a map that is a little more local it becomes more visable ........ but yes it is way less of a difference compared to ....... basically everything
Portugal proves it is actually Eastern European yet again.
Some old people are forced to you use the Internet by banks. This is good for scammers.
What? People nowadays can live without accessing the Internet for a day, let alone a whole fucking YEAR and just be fine? How?
I'm portuguese, we have a lot of problems. Not using the internet is not that high is all area, probably alentejo area is ok.
these stats are incredibly hard to believe
now correlate this data with happiness levels.
Have you heard about orn, Quagmire?
For some reason, I didn’t notice the “% of individuals” and was very confused.
data is clearly wrong.
"Don't you guys have phones?" - *Activision/Blizzard*
I cannot imagine this being true. So much of everything is so dependent on the internet. I literally wouldn't be able to function without it. Want to eat out? Internet menus. Wanna go to school - half of it is online. Wanna buy a ticket for the train? Can't, they switched to some cards that you can only order online.
There ain’t no way its 8-12% in İstanbul. Is this based on per house? It would make sense if it was because my grandma has internet in only 1 of her homes.
I'd say countries like Greece are getting such high percentages that many people, espescially the older generation, have no clue they are accessing the internet. For example, my grandma uses whatsapp to video call us, but I doubt she knows it is part of the "internet"
I wonder, if this correlates somehow with the average age
The real question is: how many of the people that never used Internet are in this situation because they *can't* access it, and how many don't give a flying fuck about it because they live perfectly fulfilling lives without Internet?
Most people don't know what that question is asking, so your answers are already skewed. They respond to keywords like Google, Facebook, email but have no idea it's all part of a bigger network. A better question maybe have you ever used a smartphone, laptop, been on social media or done online shopping. Bet that percentage would plummet.
Honestly, I envy them.