study
Young people a little less online – but more than before Corona
A young man is playing an online computer game. photo
© Lino Mirgeler/dpa/archive image
At 67.8 hours per week, the online time of 16 to 18 year olds decreased slightly in 2022. However, it is still well above the value of the pre-Corona year 2019.
Relaxed corona rules and fewer digital lessons: According to a recent study, young people’s internet use decreased slightly in the third year of the pandemic.
At an average of 67.8 hours per week, the online time of 16 to 18 year olds in 2022 was slightly below the value of the previous year (2021: 70.4 hours per week). This is the result of Postbank’s current youth digital study. Compared to the pre-Corona year 2019, however, young people again spent over ten hours more online this year.
Tablets have recently been very popular: in 2022, they were used for a total of 11.5 hours per week, around 4.5 hours longer than in 2021 and even a good seven hours longer than in the year before the pandemic. This means that tablets are significantly more popular among young people than desktop PCs (6.9 hours per week) and laptops (6.2). Young people continue to spend most of their time (39.0 hours) on their smartphones, but also slightly less than in 2021 (43.7).
There are also clear differences in usage between the sexes. Girls therefore prefer tablets and smartphones, while boys use desktop PCs more frequently. In June of this year, 1,000 German teenagers were interviewed for the representative study.
“The strong shifts in the preferred devices surprised us,” said Thomas Brosch, Head of Digital Sales at Postbank. “The ease of use, like that of a smartphone, in combination with a large screen, turns out to be the winning concept.”