Just over half of 75 to 84-year-old women and men in Austria participate in digital life. This is evident from a survey among seniors in the period April to July 2023, CBS announced on Wednesday. More than half said they had used the internet in the three months prior to the survey. In the age group 16 to 74, this was 95 percent.
The analysis by Statistics Austria, which was commissioned by the Federal Chancellery, also showed that internet use among older people is strongly linked to education, gender and living conditions. Among people aged 75 to 84, highly educated people are more likely to be online, and men are more likely to be online than women. While nine out of ten older people with a university degree (88 percent) were online, internet use was significantly lower among older people with a secondary school diploma (68 percent) or a work-study/BMS (56 percent) as their highest degree. Internet use was lowest among people with at most a compulsory education diploma (33 percent).
“Digital divide still deep”
“The digital divide between the 75 and over age group and younger people is still wide,” says Tobias Thomas, Managing Director of Statistics at Statistics Austria. According to the study, almost all 16 to 44 year-olds in Austria used the internet (between 98 and 100 percent). However, as people got older, internet use began to decline steadily. While it was 93 percent among 55 to 64 year-olds, it was only 79 percent among 65 to 74 year-olds. Among 75 to 85 year-olds, this number dropped to 54 percent. However, Statistics Austria’s detailed analysis showed that 64 percent of 75 to 79 year-olds went online, while this was only 43 percent among 80 to 84 year-olds.
Older men used the digital world significantly more often than women (44 percent), at 67 percent. It also turned out that seniors living in multi-person households were on the internet significantly more often (61 percent) than singles (40 percent).
(Editorial notes: From April to July 2023, approximately 4,400 households and approximately 6,400 people participated in the survey via telephone interviews or web questionnaires. The reporting period was the time of the survey for households and the time of the survey for people or the last three or twelve months before the time of the survey.)
Source: Krone
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