Covid's Impact On Digital Use

How does it vary across countries and cultures?

Did we really spend more time on the Internet during Covid? Yes. All around the world? Yes.  Everyone?  No. So, who where did Internet use drop?  China of all places.  Averaging 5 hours and 50 minutes of use per day at the beginning of 2020, China’s usage dropped by nearly half an hour a day during the rest of the year, with time spent on social media also dropping. 

Given the lockdowns, how did this happen?  There are several possible explanations.  One is that the lockdowns were fairly focused.  Maybe people in other parts of China, fearing they might be next, actually spent less time on the web—shopping, working or visiting with friends and family.  Another is that China’s average mobile data speed has been climbing fast with its rapid spread of 5G and now exceeds 150 Mbps.  This increased efficiency may explain some of the shorter time on the web.  And third, Covid pulled some people from their work places.  With urban China’s limited experience working at home, this may have led to less work-related time on the Internet, even as China’s use of social media (QQ, WeChat, Douyin, etc.) grew by 12.9% during 2020.

Almost nowhere else was there an actual drop in Internet use. That said, Japan, with one of the world’s lowest levels of Internet addiction, and Taiwan, which holds the world’s best survival record against Covid, experienced almost no change in average use.  In other words, instead of running for cover on the web, people in China, Japan and Taiwan put on their masks, as they were used to doing for years when they had the flu, and went on with their normal lives. 

As for the rest of the world, average Internet use went up 21 minutes a day between the Q3 2019 and Q3 2020, after dropping by 10 minutes in the preceding year*.  Globally, this added about 25 billion person-days to our collective time on the web in 2020.  As usual, though, there were variations.  Some countries added three or more times as much Internet use as others did. The Philippines, for example, which already led the world with its 9:45 hours of average daily Internet use at the start of 2020, jumped to 10:46 hours a year later.  Other countries with heavy average usage had even higher relative increases, including Malaysia (16.8%), Indonesia (11.1%) and Colombia (10.4%), with Singapore’s jump (19.4%) being the highest, possibly reflecting its leading population density and the reluctance of people to mingle during Covid.

As for countries with previously lower levels of Internet usage, some of these spiked in 2020 also.  The UK rose nearly 18%, Germany 11.6%, and the U.S. and Canada both close to 10%.  India, on the other hand, with connection speeds less than one-tenth China’s and very heavy reliance on mobiles for Internet access, had a slight drop in average use in 2020 but a large rise in 2021 (10.8%) to 7 hours and 19 minutes by January 2022, reflecting, most likely, its delayed reaction to Covid.  (India’s record-setting 700 million Covid vaccinations occurred in 2021.)

The other way that Covid may have affected things was in terms of new Internet users. Here China had an astounding 16% growth in 2020.  To the extent that the new users were low users, this may also have added to the drop in China’s average use.  Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, meanwhile, had increases in new users exceeding 20%, in some cases because their Internet user levels were low to begin with (e.g. 50% in Indonesia).  As for eastern European countries, including Turkey, most grew 5% to 15% in Internet users during 2020 as Covid and its related circumstances may have induced more of their largely older individuals to get on the web. 

Should Covid continue to dissipate, if not fade, we will be watching to see if Internet usage returns to pre-Covid.  And we will continue to look for other explanations of the interface between pandemics and our digital lives.  Please contact us with any other hypotheses.

*The data referenced here is from the Dataportal’s 2022, 2021 and 2020 Global Reports, based on a wider set of sources as indicated therein.  The later references to growth in Internet users are based on ITU data.