Like it or not, during the last decade, social media has become part of our lives. It’s been ten years since Facebook was first launched (and 8 since Twitter’s birth) and we thought it may be a good moment to take a second and pay attention to some facts and figures about the importance of social networks on the current European society.
More than 3 out of 4 homes are connected to the Internet, 97% of which have a broadband connection (DSL or fiber-optic). According to this, it’s not a surprise that as much as 62% of European citizens between 16 and 74 years old use the Internet on a daily basis, and that percentage climbs up to 88% when we focus on the younger ones.
Let’s stop and wonder, how skilled are european internet users? In an attempt to shed some light on it, Eurostat made a list of 6 basic Internet skills and asked individuals how many of those activities they had done at least once during the past three months (used search engine; sent mail with attachment; posted messages to chatrooms/newsgroups or online discussion forum; made phone calls; done peer-to-peer file sharing or created a web page). People who had carried out 1 or 2 of these 6 Internet-related items, are consider to have low Internet basic skills; people who had done 3 or 4 of these activities, are considered as medium-skilled, and people who did 5 or 6 of them have high basic Internet skills.
What about social media? According to Eurostat Survey, 43% of all european (and 88% of the students) participate in social networks for private purposes –even when the penetration rate varies from one country to another.
With more than 194 million active users, Facebook is the most popular social network in the European Union, and it’s also the most popular in each and every country, when considered separately.
There’s no doubt Europeans love food and fashion –these are the top industries on Facebook considering the number of fans. Is it a surprise that travel is not among the top 8 industries?
Some of these figures may seem more or less obvious; others, can be revealing. What do you think about them?
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