3.8 million Germans have never surfed the World Wide Web, communicated with friends online or written an e-mail.
Although most Germans have long had a home-installed modem for instant internet access, some 3.8 million people between the ages of 16 and 74 have never accessed the Internet.
Not using the internet is noticed especially in the elderly. Thus according to the data of the Federal Statistics Office in Wiesbaden one in five people aged 65 to 74 years have never accessed online.
And in the age group between 55 and 64, eight percent have never visited a website. While the percentage of young people under 55 who have never visited a website or downloaded something from the internet is three percent.
Big differences in the EU
According to Eurostat statistics, the average number of people who did not use the Internet in the EU in 2021 was eight percent, however there are large differences between countries. In Ireland, the Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, the percentage of 16-74 year olds who have never used the internet is less than five per cent.
The highest percentages of people who did not use the Internet were registered in Greece with 20 percent, Bulgaria with 17 percent and Portugal with 16 percent.
More than a third of the world’s population – a total of 2.9 billion people – have no access to the Internet at all.
