Italy runs on the Internet and reaches new records for the number of people surfing the net: 73,7% of Italians do it, almost 3 out of 4. This was stated by the 13th Communication Report of Censis, presented in the Zuccari room of the Senate .
According to the research, continues the rapid growth of smartphones, now used by 64,8% of Italians (and by 89,4% of young people aged 14-29): +12% in one year. The overall growth of web users in the period 2007-2016 was equal to +28,4%: over the last ten years the Italians who surf the Internet have gone from less than half to almost three quarters of Italians (they were the 45,3% in 2007 alone).
It also grows the social networking phenomenon: Facebook is more popular and is used by 56,2% of Italians (44,3% in 2013), reaches 89,4% of users among the under 30s and 72,8% among the more educated.
YouTube also increases its supporters, from 38,7% in 2013 to 46,8% in 2016. Instagram has risen from 4,3% of users in 2013 to 16,8% in 2016. A real boom for WhatsApp: in 2016 it was used by 61,3% of Italians.
For a long time, women have shown a predilection for television and books. But in 2016 the traditional dominance of reading books, weekly and monthly, was added to the female primacy also in the use of the internet, where women overtook men: 74,1% of users among the former (they stood at 43,2% in 2011) compared to 73,2% for the latter.
As for the traditional media, TV and radio are in excellent health. 97,5% of Italians watch television and viewers are still increasing (+0,8% in the last year), especially those of digital terrestrial (+1,5%) and satellite (+1%) TV, while users of the various forms of internet TV (web TV via PC and smart TV) amount to 24,4% and those of mobile TV to 11,2%. The cumulative growth for internet TV in the period 2007-2016 is equal to +14,4 percentage points.
The radio ratings are also excellent, with an overall user base of 83,9% of Italians. The radio listeners who use traditional devices are increasing (+4,8% in one year) and the other carriers of the radio message remain stable, after an overall growth in the period 2007-2016 of radio users from smartphones of +13,7 % and internet radio via PC equal to +6,9%.
Painful notes instead for i print newspapers, who lose readers, reduced to 40,5% of Italians (-1,4% in the last year, -26,5% overall in the period 2007-2016). As the usage of the online newspapers (+1,9% in the last year) and other information websites (+1,3%). The weeklies (+1,7%) and monthlies (+3,9%) maintain their readers, but not paper books (-4,3% in the last year, with a share of readers decreased to 47,1% of Italians), still not compensated by e-book readers, which have increased by 1,1% in the last year, but amount to only 10% of the population.
