The internet has become a very important source of information, income or news nowadays, so more and more people in Europe are accessing it on a daily basis. However, based on an infographic that was created by the EU Institute for Security Studies it seems that while some European countries have a very large internet coverage, others have a major problem in improving their internet connectivity, while others are in the beginning.
According to this infographic, it seems that the countries with the most internet active population are Sweden, Netherlands, Finland and Luxembourg. This was to be expected, considering these countries have a great reachability when it comes to internet access, and they also have a consistent, great monthly revenue per person. In these countries you can also find persons that use the web from more than a single device, which means that here they actually get to use mobile, tablet and desktop devices in order to connect to the web.
Some of the companies that follow shortly thereafter are France, Spain, Estonia, the United Kingdom, Germany and Ireland. In the same category you can also add countries such as Austria and Belgium, which seem to have a very active internet population as well. On the other side, you have countries such as Romania, Malta, Bulgaria and Italy which still don’t have a lot of access to the internet. In fact, these countries have a high rate as well when it comes to individuals that have never used the internet at least once in their lives. Romania is leading this with around 42%, followed by Bulgaria with 41%, and Greece as well as Portugal are following shortly. The countries with the largest internet coverage also have the lowest number of people that never used the internet.
Click infographic for a pop-up of the large version
At a European level, around 72% of all the population uses the internet regularly, but 20% still didn’t use the internet at least once. The internet skill is quite high when it comes to the persons that use it often, but the main problem comes at the computer skill level, which is fairly low in comparison to the aforementioned one.
When you take this statistic by country, you will see that the highest internet skill level can be found in countries such as Germany, Ireland, Czech Republic, Romania, France and Luxemburg. On the other side of the table is Lithuania, Italy, Greece and Cyprus, among others.
The computer skills taken by country show that Germany, Belgium, Sweden, Czech Republic and Netherlands have a great computer skill set, while countries like Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and a few others have a hard time using the computer.
This infographic is highly interesting and it basically shows that each country comes with a different internet habit and many of them still have to deal with a lack of internet coverage. And as if that wasn’t enough, many countries in Europe still have to deal with a low set of computer and internet usage skills. The amazing thing here is that people know how to use the web better than handling a computer, which is quite fun to find out.
Details around this study and more insightful infographics can be found in the digital magazine of the European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS) free of cost.
Photo credit: European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS) / Highways Agency
