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A Quarter of the EU Has Never Used the Web
smitty777 writes "Reuters reports that a quarter of the EU has yet to use the internet. Further, half of those in some of the southern and western states do not even have internet access at home. From the article: 'As well as highlighting geographic disparities across one of the world's most-developed regions, the figures underline the lack of opportunity people in poorer communities have to take part in advances such as the Internet that have delivered lower cost goods and service to millions of people.' The full report created by Eurostat can be found here."
"Reuters reports that a quarter of the EU has yet to use the internet. Further, half of those in some of the southern and western states do not even have internet access at home.
So half of the people that has never used the web has internet access at home?
The summory sais 'West' but that's supposed to be 'East' - the former communist countries. Poverty and bad infrastructure are known problems there.. Lack of internet probably the least of their problems.
As for southern europe goes - yes, they have more internet cafe's. I assume the climate helps on that culture, same as for coffee etc.
States?
>Further, half of those in some of the southern and western states do not even have internet access at home.
The EU is not a federation, or any other sort of relation-ship, of states. All talk of states in this context is incorrect.
Find Japanese addresses in English on Google Maps Japan: http://diddlefinger.com/
Everyone should have access to the internet. Those at the poorest end of society need it the most because all the best utility deals are online, as is a lot of government information.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Further down you mention a "meatspace wife". I really hope she's suing for divorce, poor woman. Though I suppose a self proclaimed sociopath is better than a Pentecostal.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
The article (and report) conclude that "24 percent of 16-74 year olds across the 27 countries in the European Union have never accessed the Internet". Meanwhile in the parts of the EU with the highest Internet use (such as in the Scandinavian countries) the rate of Internet access (ie people who actively use the Internet, not people who've used it only once) is in the 90%.
I would assume part of the reason for the statistic is that 16-74 is a pretty big age span. Particularly when it comes to new technology. It wouldn't surprise me if the "never used internet" population is almost entirely in the 50+ age bracket. Unfortunately the article, and report, doesn't give that information.
"Lowest standard of living in Europe."
Not all the world is the USA, and you do not have a monopoly on enforcing the meaning of words.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
So, interestingly, your argument (which I completely agree with) seems to have been taken on board by the poorer EU States.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
As a Spaniard (South and West of EU) I have to say the summary is wrong. The fine article says the South and EAST!
Anyway, Spain is a country with large rural areas, but the broadband is nearly ubiquitous.
You now need a super Computer to see a web site. What a fscking waste.
I think poor people do need the internet and dial up would meet most of their needs. Dial up could be much faster than 56k with new techno. I think we could easily do 1mbs over dial up without distance restrictions from exchange. But hey we want eye candy so that is the way we are going.
TV was supposed to be a tool for education when invented. Now it is basically shit and not much else. Even the science shows are dumbed down. AYE.
Most ex-communist countries weren't a part of the Soviet Union. IIRC only the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) were parts of the USSR. The rest were (nominally) sovereign countries aligned with the USSR (or not even that - see Yugoslavia, a communist country that had strained relations with the Soviet Union).
Since my country is mentioned in the article, I'd like to make some things clear, which weirdly are not included. First of all, half of the population doesn't have internet access because they have much more urgent needs such as food, shelter and basic utilities. Second of all, to use the internet you need some sort of computer, the cheapest of which costs more than the average salary in the country. Furthermore, I find it insanely arrogant to claim that poor people need internet to shop. Poor people buy second hand stuff for 1-2 Euro, not 10% discounted designer jeans. Even the most accurate statistic is useless unless compared against reality.
So, which is it?
I'm always amazed when I see the number of articles on Wikipedia in different languages. The German Wikipedia for example has about 1.3 million articles, while the number of German-speaking people is about 100 million. There are *a lot* more people speaking Spanish around the world (Mexico alone has more than 100 million citizens), yet there are only about 850.000 articles in Spanish on Wikipedia.
I think the number of articles says a lot about internet penetration in European countries, because most of them have their own language. The Dutch Wikipedia for example has almost a million articles, while only about 30 million or so people actually speak the language. You see the same sort of ratio between articles to speakers in other nordic and western European countries. This ratio drops sharply as you move towards the east and south of Europe. People seem to be a lot less interested to add content to the internet in those countries. You could argue a poor country has other more important preoccupations, but people in countries such as Spain or Italy aren't all that poor, yet they don't seem to be adding a lot of articles to Wikipedia either.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
Just like with all things, time and a compelling reason is needed to adopt new practices. My mother disliked it when computers were introduced in her job and after retirement was not interested in using the home PC for leisure purposes. When the nest became empty, Skype became a necessity. Last time I visited, she was looking at the camera and saying "hmmm, this photo is too dark but I'll adjust the brightness when I get home"...once at home she was complaining the computer was "too damn slow!" to get anything done...
I've met more than a few elderly people with, well not an Internet aversion but I guess just Internet ambivalence. They didn't have it growing up, they can't see why they need it now and don't wish to learn something new.
Also they are part of the case of dialup stats. You find an amazing number of people still on dialup. Geeks tend to say "Oh that's because broadband distribution sucks, so many people can't get it!" While it is true that broadband penetration isn't 100%, turns out that where most people live it is available. Most people live in more concentrated areas (hence why they are concentrated) and broadband is there.
Looking in to it you find there are people who just don't care. My grandma was one of those. Had a modem until like 2007. The only reason she got broadband was my uncle got fed up with not having broadband when he visited and just ordered it for her. She liked it once she had it, but couldn't be talked in to ordering it herself.
I've been on the Internet since mid 80-ies. With the authority of experience -for what it's really worth- I can classify these 25% as the happy few.
There still are ample media available for you to live an informed life without using the Internet.
Personally I find the Internet an invaluable source of CS related information and a nifty tool to obtain good deals on purchases. I actually speak face to face with people I care about. Anything skin deep I ignore completely.
I'm most likely not interested in your life story. The best times I have with actual people. CS is merely a hobby that happens to earn me a living. It took me a few mental leaps in the early stages to realise that graphical representations of bytes will never govern my life.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
The EU has a wide spread of countries, and development levels. Rural Romania has a different level of wealth and technology infrastructure than urban Finland, for example.
You make a good point about trust as an issue why some people might not take up internet use. My 77 year old father here in the UK does not go shopping online. I think part of this is lack of trust with the novel (to him) environment. Also, he doesn't need to go online. All his local services are within a few kilometres and he likes doing business in person. He is retired, so he can go to the bank and shops during quiet times of the day. Some people don't need the internet, or if they have access to it, choose not to use it.
For some people in Europe it is technical infrastructure. Check out a map of Europe and you will find that there are large areas where there is low speed or little access to the internet - modem speed access or maybe no access to fixed line telephones or mobile coverage. In Scotland, there is better coverage for 3G phones in the seas around the country than on the surface area of the land (internet is usually ok up to 2Mbs via land line in this country).
For quite a number of people in Europe, they cannot afford the cost of an internet connection. Check out prices in some of the lower developed European countries compared to state pension levels for example. For the young, employed, urban Europeans in highly developed countries internet costs are low compared to income, but for many others this is not the case.
when you have to non-choose between surfing the Web (for whatever reason) and feeding your kids (or yourself) or paying the rent or going to the doctor ... the action is straightforward: you suppress what is not first necessity and accessing the Web in this circumstancies is NOT first necessity.
If we're talking about EU member states, the solution is easy: Make it a requirement - in order to remain a member - to get the Internet out to everyone. Doesn't matter if it's a question of cabling, access costs or people too stupid to use it or get it - just get it fixed, whatever it takes. If they don't just kick them out.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
We have National Rifle Association mailers and Fox News providing reliable information in lieu of the internet.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
some hillbilly christian types that have no internet, no cable TV, no landline telephone, they live way out of town, they believe the US Government is the "Beast" of Revelation (chapter 13) and the end of the world is going to happen before the end of this decade
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Not the Internet per se but mobile phones have been used by yak herders to decide the best time to take their yaks to the valley to sell, and by fishermen to decide where to take their catch.
Economics 101 tells you that power st6ems from asymmetric information. The Internet is a leveler of playing fields.
A friend of ours is in Nepal at the moment and using the Internet to relay back exactly what can be done most effectively to support the charity she's working with. The result is that they get aid months earlier than they would have done. I'm afraid that your argument is about Western media consumers, not real poor people.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
The lack of Internet at home does not mean those people are disconnected. There are many people who only use the Internet at work, or go to a netcafe etc.
You could argue a poor country has other more important preoccupations, but people in countries such as Spain or Italy aren't all that poor, yet they don't seem to be adding a lot of articles to Wikipedia either.
I'd say the weather has a part in that. I'd rather enjoy the countryside in the Toscana or a stroll and hangout outside in the town of Florence then go outside where it's raining constantly. Or at least way more often as it does in Italy and Spain. My time spent on the web would be less in those countries, I presume. Especially if they have a tradition of socializing outside. Which both countries do.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
As hard as it would be to imagine in the United States, there are still places on earth where people actually know each other and interact with each other in person. If some farming village in the middle of nowhere doesn't have internet access, then I wouldn't wish it upon them. For the most part the internet is a scourge. I would be more interested to know how people without the internet in their lives survive. In america you can't even get a job without going online, which is ridiculous. Poor people are not helped by technology. Rich people force poor people to use technology as a way of generating revenue from otherwise lost causes.
if your life is such a big joke then why should I care?
"but on paper we are still different countries"
Hmm , not really. A true country has control of its own foreign policy and defense. The US States don't. A federal system is not the same ad a coalition which is what the EU is.
Broadband internet access enables higher speed when browsing and performing activities over the internet. The proportion of households with a broadband connection rose in all Member States in 2011 compared with 2006. Sweden (86%) registered the highest share of broadband connections in 2011, followed by Denmark (84%), the Netherlands and the United Kingdom (both 83%) and Finland (81%), while Romania (31%), Bulgaria (40%) and Greece (45%) had the lowest.
Soooo the places where connectivity sucks people don't bother getting on the net? Maybe there is something in the ratio between minimum wage and cost of getting on a slow as shit ISP.
Minimum Wage:
Greece Euro 25.01 per day ($US 93.30/mo)
Bulgaria: 150 Levs per month ($US 95.54/mo)
Romania: 390 RON per month ($US 116.80/mo)
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
I'm really getting rather sick of listening to patronising Generation Y'ers that the net is the solution to all day to day transactions and that anyone who doesn't agree is some sort of reactionary luddite.
You know what? If those people want to live their lives online then thats their lookout.
But I actually LIKE going to shops to check out stuff physically before I buy in IT THE SHOP so I have somewhere to take it back to if it fails instead of having to parcel it up and go down the post office and pay money to send it back and then find out it got lost in the post and they never received it.
I LIKE sending cheques instead of using direct debit so *I* can choose on what day I pay, not have the money taken out regardless of how much is left in my account.
I LIKE speaking to a human on the end of a phone, not having to navigate through some feckin useless website which doesn't solve my problem anyway.
I LIKE using cash because I don't want my bank/CC company knowing about every single goddamn transaction I make.
And to sum up , I LIKE not having to be reliant on a sometimes unreliable piece of kit called a computer to run my entire feckin life.
1- Sponsor study showing some people never used the internet/has lower bandwidth internet, pointing out as to how this disparity in such a developed continent is baaaaad. 2- ??? 3- PROFIT!
Send your spendthrift head of state this
there are a lot of old people in europe
Thats why they still think French is the language of the future and that they're still a world power and the most important nation in the EU.
oh lord this reminds me of a phone call I had this morning with an 80+ yo customer (helping with his connectivity), of Austrian or German descent, Helmut von something or other,
Me, speaking slowly and articulating each word, after spending a long time explaining what a web browser is, "ok sir, now that you have entered the website address, please press the enter key."
In a soft gurgling voice, he answered slowly, painfully, "urghalam, urs, ahh, ussh, ur, er, nein, , urgh, argh, ja, ok, no, I cannot see the enter key anywhere on the screen..."
At this point my toes curled in on themselves and I screamed silently, stomach contents churning in rancid, bubling acid.
I relayed the story awhile back about internet connectivity and one set of relatives. They saw no need for "that internet" let alone even computers for the most part because they never were impacted by it.
Until grandchildren entered the picture and were in pictures. Pictures they could get by having the computer make all that noise connecting to the internet (dial up on the farm, cable will probably never be an option in rural midwest). That sold them on the net, do they use it for much more than pictures, not really.
So I can fully expect to see large parts of the world, even in areas we count at civilized, as not having access the net simply because it has not crossed their lives nor have they been negatively impacted by not having access.
People these days are quick to claim rights to things they want without the realization that its not a right but a want. A want that many other people might not even care about. It makes life easier for those who adapted to it but for others its not going to do squat.
I can cite a hundred examples of how it would make life better for someone to have access to the net on a daily basis but if your just getting by or have fields to take care of, you already have a full day and for many people that is contentment.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
They are probably better off...the way Comcast and Verizon (the only 2 real choices in our area) charge ridiculous prices and, frankly, price fix everything the cost would be too high for most and I am NOT going to subsidize someone else just because I can afford my connection right now....no way. If Obama had his way he would make those of us who can afford it pay for everyone who cannot...last I checked, having internet access wasn't a God-given right....although Liberals would have you believe that...
"According to an online poll..."
heh
I wouldn't say though that this is necessarily a bad thing for those 25%. If they never used the internet, the reason is probably that they never had to so far. If most of their local environment can be dealt with offline (telephone, personal contact), than why should they pay for internet access? Besides, if a local population in some eastern rural village felt they absolutely need internet access to survive than I'd guess they'd petition their local government to install such a service.
As for me, I've been using the internet since 1996 (with a "high speed" 14.4kbit/s modem) when I was in 7th grade in high school, so I basically grew up with it. Today I do almost everything online, online banking, online shopping, email, health care, job search and application and entertainment. So much so, that if a company or government institution doesn't offer some kind of online access or service, I don't want to deal with them.
I work in science and I access scientific publications online. Stuff I don't know I read up on wikipedia, places I have to go I check first on google earth. If I want to learn something new (programming language, howto tie my tie, how to shave properly) I look up a tutorial online (and automatically assume that high google page rank is euqivalent to high quality).
In short I have no idea how people went by their the daily lifes before the age of internet! It is not that the information was not there before, it was just much harder to get to it. And I think that people had some skills and abilities back then that I completely lack. And this worries me.
It is like with the calculator. A 100 years ago people were very good at basic arithmetics (look up the harvard entry exam from the early 19th century, you'll see that they must have been damn good at it), but then came the electronic calculator and today most people fail to do even simple multiplications. You take away their calculator and they are completely helpless.
Same with the internet, you take it away from me and I feel lost. And those 25% in the EU they still know how to live without internet and I kind of envy them a little.
I'm not sure why thats so bad? because they haven't connected to the internet they are instantly thought of as a lower class?
Er, we're not the United States of Europe just yet. Refer to the southern and western countries, sure, but not states.
I'd have thought that the eastern countries would have lower take up than the western ones though - the new EU members that were once part of the eastern bloc - but perhaps if you live in Spain or Portugal you have better things to do than spend your life on the internet...
Sigs are so 1990s. No way would I be seen dead with one.
Well, if 25% have not used the WWW, then obviously 75% have... I think that in any study of technology use, you will find that 25% of the people either cannot find the resources to use it ($$), don't want to use it (Luddites), or are so far out into the boondocks that the technology is not easily available.
Leaving aside the question about percentages of users, almost everyone in almost every country (in europe, at least) can receive a 3G signal. So long as you can receive that signal and can afford the equipment, you have internet access. Whether or not you then choose to spend your agricultural-grade income on something as unnecessary as Facebook or Twitter access, and content in a language you probably don't speak is up to you. I have to say that if I only earned 50 euros a day and was asked to pay out some hundreds for a computer, and 3G broadband - but that most of the content I could access was in some unknown language, I think I could easily life a full and happy life without it.
Having internet access at home does not mean you need to have ADSL or cable provision. It only means that it is theoretically possible, with enough money spent, to ping a site. It does not mean the access has to be affordable, ubquitous or even useful. On that basis, this survey fails.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
The phrase "these United States" has been used only rarely, at least in the publications scanned by google, and much more Post-Civil war than before. There is a curious spike in 1983.
In Finland banks have practically forced people to use Internet for paying bills, by making payment at the desk ridiculously expensive and reducing the number of payment machines. The 8% of Finns that have never used the internet must be old people that are wealthy enough to pay 6€ per bill. Learning even basic usage is a big effort if you haven't touched a computer before, people growing up with computers and other gadgets have no idea how hard it can be.
That's why R-Kioski (chain that makes most of it's money selling tobacco, candy, magazines and lottery tickets) has started a service where paying a bill costs "only" 3 euros.
Oh, internet access is not a "right" in Finland. There has only been talking about that every household should be capable of having a broadband access for a reasonable price, with government support if needed, but there has been no real action yet. For people living in cities there is no problem, but in the countryside many farmers can't get a broadband, or are struggling with a 3G connection that works sometimes.
Though most of Finland is covered with 3G networks, ensued by Finns need to go to a shore of one of Finland's 187888 lakes every chance they get. People expect their UMTS modem to work in their summer cottage, 100 paying customers by a lake makes you build a station for them. But if you are a lone farmer with no lakes near, who's gonna care for you? In current economic situation propably nobody.
I'm almost positive that there are STILL folks that will read this report and decry the woeful network connections many in America face - like only have a paltry meg or two download speed and ONLY two choices of providers (ignoring sattelite and cellular)...
That's why the current administration is proposing to inject billions into upgrading our national broadband infrastructure...
Ken
Here in the Republic of Ireland, the government commissioned an online survey into internet use.
They've proudly been able to report a 100% penetration of internet services, with all respondents claiming they had access to the web.
So there I was, scribbling down some notes off the PC screen by hand, when I reached for the keyboard and Ctrl-S'd.
Then it must be the south & eastern part of the EU. Bulgaria (madmen), Romania (vampires), eastern Slovakia (gypsies), and large parts of rural Poland (potato, carrots & cabbage folks).
Even if that quarter of people aren't going to use the web anytime soon, Europe is still going to run out of IPv4 addresses in a few months. And still there are countries where no single ISP is selling IPv6 capable connections. As much as it may seem like a good idea to improve infrastructure to allow the remaining Europeans to get online, it is actually more important to get the existing infrastructure upgraded to IPv6. Even if we could magically get the remaining Europeans online with IPv6, they would be 2nd class users if the old infrastructure remains IPv4 only.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
The EU is violating those poor people's human rights! The UN must invade the EU to protect their human rights!~
/sarcasm
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
The hell of it is... it was an online poll.
I8-D
A huge swath of rural US only has internet access via very slow and expensive satellite service.
The next generation (teenagers and those under thirty, are the new internet users. They have actually having more use with smart phones, texting and chat, than using the net.
My son lived in Riga Latvia for 3 years, and when I visited, there were no internet cafés, and those who had laptops had all the software imaginable. You could go on the streets and buy any software you wanted for a dollar a DVD.
Most students (my son was a not a student), had azerty keyboard laptops, all the software imaginable, and were studing Linux and Linux servers in the schools and in computer science clubs.
Call that portion of EU, the hackers domain. University of Riga is topnotch, and not promoting this kind of copyright infringement or hacking.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Britain, the EU's third largest economy after Germany and France, has become the dominant force in online commerce and government services, with more than 80 percent of 16-74 year olds making Internet purchases in the past year.
Not being patriotic (I'm Swedish), just stating a fact. The dominant forces in E-commerce in Europe is Sweden, Finland and Denmark (but Finnish & Danish companies are not very active in UK, that's why I don't mention them in the next paragraph). Those countries have a high share of international companies and those companies usually develop E-commerce for their home countries first.
The statement in the article ignores that many of the largest online resellers in Britain is Swedish (IKEA, Clas Ohlson, HM et c.) or US (Amazon) based companies. Sweden is to small of a market(*) for most kinds of business, that's why most Swedish companies quickly become international and in this case spreading E-commerce throughout the world. British (or UK, according to the table) companies don't need to be international to survive, they have a ridiculously huge home market (compared to Sweden). As UK is also very densely populated (compared to countries like Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland, or even some parts of USA) they haven't had much reason to develop E-commerce either, until foreign based companies started to be a serious threat via E-commerce.
(*) This is also why Sweden is very dependent on some foreign niche products. Sweden have been a to small market to support some kinds of production. New Swedish companies that wants to produce stuff that isn't highly in demand never get a chance (unless they go international from the start, which is to hard for most small start ups). In countries like UK this isn't a problem, because of the density of the population even most niche products find enough buyers.
You are right, libraries have free internet and free access. And opening time between 11:00 and 14:00 :(
paper Maps? Yeah, but the the whole point of being online is doing it in 2011 style. paper maps and paper books work fine. But having the 2011 online tools saves you a lot of time.
3g roaming+internet ? This might require a masters degree in comparing subscriptions... in a strange language. Certainly a throw away phone is fine for calling, they even sell them at the airport in a machine, but internet is a different story. I certainly would not provide my credit card...