Some 98.3% of young people in Cyprus – aged between 16 and 29 – use social media, the highest percentage in the European Union, new data from Eurostat has revealed.
According to the data, other countries to boast high usage rates among young people include Czechia (97.2%), Denmark (96.9%) and Finland (96.6%), while at the other end of the scale, the lowest usage rates were recorded in Italy (80.3%), Germany (84.2%), and Luxembourg (84.8%).
According to Eurostat, some 89.3% of people aged 16–29 in the EU used social networking platforms last year, significantly higher than the 67.3% share recorded in the general population (aged 16–74).
Social media gap
The largest ‘gap’ in social media usage between the general population and the young people was recorded in Croatia, where 90.7% of young people used social media compared with 61.5% of the overall population, a difference of 29.2 percentage points, Eurostat noted.
Similar disparities were recorded in Austria (28.2 percentage points, 67.9% vs 96.1%) and Poland (27.2 pp, 63.3% vs 90.5%). In contrast, the smallest gaps were recorded in Denmark (7.2 pp, 89.7% vs 96.9%), Malta (10.3 pp, 81.6% vs 91.9%) and Cyprus (11.8 pp, 86.5% vs 98.3%).
Internet usage
In terms of general internet use, 98% of young people use the internet every day across the EU, compared with 90% of the general population.
‘On average in the EU, the gap between young people and the total population using the internet every day was 8 percentage points,’ Eurostat noted. ‘This gap is narrowing: it was 15 pp in 2021 and 11 pp in 2023. This age gap in daily internet use was largest in Croatia (16 pp), followed by Bulgaria (15 pp), Poland and Lithuania (both 14 pp). In Ireland, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden there was almost no difference between young people and the total population.’ Read more here.
