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Availability and use of the Internet during the pandemic in Poland and the EU

Internet access Internet activity household pandemic

The aim of the considerations is to present the level of access to the Internet by households in Poland and other European Union countries, as well as the ways of using the Internet in the everyday life of Europeans in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. The subjective scope of the research includes individual consumers and households. The time range covers the year 2020 (Internet availability indicators are additionally compared with the data from 2019). Research material is secondary sources of information. The applied research method should be defined as a descriptive analysis with elements of quantitative analysis. The measures adopted in the survey come from the electronic databases of Eurostat. These are indicators of household access to the Internet and measures of the use of modern information and communication technologies in European households. Over the last dozen or so years, and in particular in 2020, the importance of the Internet among individual consumption entities has increased significantly. Great progress has been made both in the availability of the Internet among households and in the possibilities of its use. Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the introduction of rules of conduct based on maintaining social distancing and other restrictions, the share of people constantly using the Internet has increased. In 2020, 80% of people aged 16–74 in the EU-27 reported using the internet on a daily basis. This share varied from 62% in Bulgaria to 94% in Denmark. In Poland, it was at the level of 72%. In 2020, consumers used the internet mainly to send and receive email, play games, listen to music, watch TV or movies, search for information about goods and services, contact others via instant messaging, read news, and make phone calls or video calls. More than half of the respondents also used the Internet to make banking transactions, participate in social networks and search for health information. The problem of the availability and use of modern information and communication technologies is related, on the one hand, to threats resulting from the potential digital exclusion, and on the other hand, to e-addiction among consumers and new trends in their behavior.

doi:10.34616/142106 ISBN 978-83-66601-61-1 (druk) ISBN 978-83-66601-62-8 (online)

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