More and more people are going online - and continuing to drive Internet use in Germany. (picture alliance / dpa)
More and more people are going online - and continuing to drive Internet use in Germany. A total of 88 percent of Germans were online in 2020, according to the Digital Index 2020/2021 published by Initiative D21. According to the index, the increase of two percentage points compared to the previous year is primarily due to the rising prevalence of mobile access. But not everyone is benefiting equally from digitalization.
As the study conducted by the research company Kantar shows, older people in particular are responsible for the increase in online use. According to the study, 85 percent of 60- to 69-year-olds were online in 2020 - four percentage points more than in the previous year. However, only just under half of this age group believe they benefit from digitalization. The situation is different in the generation of 20- to 29-year-olds - here, 79 percent see themselves as winners of digitalization.
The study also reveals that, in addition to age, a person's level of education or income also determines their level of digitalization. "The higher the formal education/income, the higher the level of digitalization," the study states. "We have to counteract this digital divide," said Hannes Schwaderer, president of Initiative D21.
There was a digital boost during the year, due to the coronavirus pandemic, especially in the world of work. Here, significant leaps can be seen when it came to working from home and mobile working (+17 percentage points to 32 percent among all professional groups). In particular, there was a significant increase in the use of video conferencing services.
Digital solutions are helping to mitigate some of the consequences of the crisis, said German Economics Minister Peter Altmaier, a member of the center-right Christian Democrats (CDU). "We must take that as an important lesson from the crisis and decisively drive digitalization forward," he said, adding that investments in digitalization and the acquisition of digital skills must go hand in hand - for example, with regard to schools.
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