Making an appointment, booking a ticket or making a transfer – many services are only available online. However: More than three million people in Germany have never used the Internet.
More than three million people in Germany have never used the Internet. According to this, a good five percent of people between the ages of 16 and 74 were so-called offliners in Germany last year. That corresponds to 3.1 million people in Germany, like that Federal Statistical Office announced.
According to the information, the largest proportion of “offliners” were in the 65 to 74 year old age group – here a good seventh (15 percent) were offline. Even in the 45 to 64 year old age group, almost five percent have never used the Internet. Even among 16 to 44 year olds, the proportion was two percent in 2023.
Significant differences in Europe
Across Europe, the proportion of “offliners” was slightly higher than in Germany, as the Federal Office explained, citing figures from the statistics authority Eurostat. On average in the EU, six percent of adults and older young people have never used the Internet in the past year.
There are clear differences between the member states of the European Union: in Luxembourg, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden, less than one percent of 16 to 74 year olds said they had never used the Internet. The highest shares were recorded in Croatia (14 percent), Greece (13 percent) and Portugal and Bulgaria (12 percent each).
A third of the world population without internet
According to estimates by the United Nations International Telecommunications Union (ITU), around a third of the world’s population was offline in 2023 – that’s 2.6 billion people. In Europe, including non-EU countries, and America, the Internet is more accessible. But here too, in 2023, nine percent or 13 percent of the population still had no access to the network.