Shopping, social media, and banking: how does our internet use compare to the rest of Europe?
People in the west and north are the keenest of all Irish online users, with 90% using the internet to make purchases.
Irish people are very fond of using the likes of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok, but users down south aren't as active as people in the rest of the country.
That is just one of the observations from Eurostat's analysis on internet usage across Europe, which found that Irish people are also among the biggest users of online shopping in the EU.
The European Commission's data analysis wing said that last year, two-thirds of the EU population aged between 16 and 74 bought or ordered goods or services over the internet during the 12 months prior to the survey.
The Dutch are the darlings for the likes of Amazon and other online retailers, along with the Danes, but the Irish are not too far behind, the data shows.
"This share reached a peak of 93% in three Dutch regions (Drenthe, Utrecht and Zeeland). More generally, there was a very high tendency to use e-commerce in all but one of the remaining Dutch regions (Limburg being the exception), all of the Danish regions, all but two of the Swedish regions, two out of three Irish regions and Corse (France)," Eurostat said.
People in the west and north are the keenest of all Irish online users, with 90% using the internet to make purchases, while they are also the most likely to use online banking, with an 84% rate.
Dublin and the midlands are the same when it comes to making purchases online but are slightly less likely to use internet banking at 77%.
In the south of the country, the online shopping percentage drops to 83%, while just under three-quarters of people are internet banking users.
When it comes to social media, nearly three-quarters of those in the east, north, west, and midlands are active users, with the likes of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok cited.
Those who live down south are less bothered with online social media, with just under two-thirds likely to be users.
For the EU as a whole, some 57% of the bloc's population participated in social networks, with a significant discrepancy between those who are older and those who are younger, perhaps unsurprisingly.
The participation rate for youths aged 16–29 years (83%) was almost four times as high as the corresponding rate for older people aged 65–74 years (23%), Eurostat said.
When it comes to internet banking, the Finns, Danes, and the Dutch are the biggest users, while Bulgarians and Romanians are on the opposite end of the scale, the data show.
At least 90% of people made use of internet banking in every region of Denmark, Finland, as well as eight out of 12 regions in the Netherlands.
"The Finnish capital region of Helsinki-Uusimaa had the highest share of internet banking (96%). Every region of Bulgaria and Romania (except for the capital regions of Yugozapaden and Bucureşti-Ilfov) reported less than one-quarter of all people making use of internet banking. This was also the case for Kentriki Elláda in central Greece," Eurostat said.
The Bulgarian regions of Yugoiztochen and Severen Tsentralen had the lowest proportions of people making use of the internet to purchase goods or services over the internet at 26% and 27%, respectively, in 2021.
Regions in eastern Germany were the least bothered about social media, with only around a third of its people active on various sites.
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