Analytics, Internet, Latvia, Society, Technology

The proportion of Internet users differ significantly among the age groups. Within the age group 16–44 almost 96% of the population used Internet regularly, while within the age group 45–64 the share constituted 71.3%, and within the age group 65–74 those were only 35.5%.

At the beginning of 2017, 70.2% of the Internet users used mobile devices to access the Internet away from home or work. Mobile phone (or smart phone) was the most popular device and was used by 64.2% of the Internet users, whereas 26.5% accessed Internet while away from home or work via portable computer (e.g., laptop, tablet).

Internet is used for various activities. Sending/ receiving e-mails is the most common Internet activity (85.5% of the persons that used Internet in the last 3 months), followed by reading online news sites/ newspapers/ news magazines (83.6%).

Females are more active in communicating via the Internet (sending/ receiving e-mails, participating in social networks, as well as telephoning/ video calls (via webcam) over the Internet). Females more frequently than males use Internet to seek health-related information (e.g. injury, disease, nutrition, improving health, etc.), moreover greater proportion of females used Internet Banking.

However, males more often used Internet for finding information about goods or services, for reading online news sites/ newspapers/ news magazines, as well as for participating in professional networks (creating user profile, posting messages or other contributions to LinkedIn, Xing, ibizness.lv, prokontakti.lv). Larger share of males was also posting opinions on civic or political issues via websites (e.g. blogs, social networks, etc.) and taking part in online consultations or voting to define civic or political issues (e.g. urban planning, signing a petition).

Internet activities (as% of persons that used Internet in the last 3 months)

Survey data show that, compared to the previous year, in 2017 e-skills of the population generally have not change – 65.7% have copied or moved files or folders, 66.1% transferred files between computers or other devices, 24.1% created presentations or documents integrating text, pictures, tables or charts, and 15.3% were using software to edit photos, video or audio files. Compared to 2016, these indicators have increased slightly. However, a drop was observed in the share of population installing software or applications (32.6%), changing the settings of any software, including operating system or security programs (16.6%), using word processing software (42.9%), and using spread sheet software (30.9%).

Community Survey on ICT Usage in Households and by Individuals was conducted at the beginning of 2017, and it engaged 5800 persons aged 16–74.

More information on information society is available in the CSB database section Science and Technology (Information Technologies).