The Swedes and their media habits
This week I have been going through the report Svenskarna och internet 2021 (Swedes and the internet) in order to find out more about the Swedes media habits.
In Sweden today 90 % of all citizens use the internet every day, and the most common way to access it is through a mobile phone. This digital behaviour is reflected also in the media consumption which in Sweden is highly digital. News is consumed digitally to a much larger extent than print.
70 % of internet users aged 8 and above use digital newspapers for reading news. Ca 50 % use the Swedish tv-channels web pages and apps for a news update. And just below a third use radio webpage and app to consume news. Approx. 50 % get news from social media, the most popular social media being Facebook and Youtube. Reading news on social media is much more common in the younger part of the internet users.
When looking at the usage of digital media services amongst internet users (aged 8 and above) 31 % read a digital newspaper everyday, 40 % read a digital newspaper at least once a week. These numbers are interesting to look at in comparison to other medias. We can for example see that:
57 % watch streaming video services at least once a week
55 % watch the TV channels streaming service at least once a week
52 % listen to music streaming/podcast services at least once a week
The research also breaks down the consumption pattern into generations. Through that we can learn that when it comes to digital newspapers the generations that reads digital newspapers to the largest extent is those born in the 50’s (45 %) and the 60’s (46 %). There is a big difference to the generation born in the 00’s of which only 6 % read digital newspapers daily.
If we look at the generational statistics for daily podcast listening we find that this is most common with people born in the 90’s (64 %) and the 00’s (58 %) whilst it is very low numbers for those born in the 20/30/40’s.
The use of digital news is much bigger than the willingness to pay for it. In the age group 18+ more than twice as many read digital newspapers in comparison to the ones that pay for a digital news subscription. The ones most willing to pay for both printed and digital news are pensioners.
If we look more thoroughly into the willingness to pay for digital media services we find that 29 % of the respondents aged 18 and above say that their household pays for a subscription of a printed newspaper, 28 % that they pay for a digital news subscription within the last year. The most common media the households paid for in the last year was streamed video services (64 %), streamed music/podcast service (57 %) and printed books (32 %). We can also spot a big difference between generations in what kind of media services they pay for. 20 % of the respondents aged 18–29 paid for a digital news subscription, whilst that number was 37 % for those aged above 66. This can be seen in comparison to the willingness to pay for streamed music/podcast services which 82 % of those aged 18–29 did, in comparison to those aged 66+ where only 12 % did the same.
In the outskirts of this digital society is also those that do not use internet at all, those mainly being elderlys. 1 out of 5 pensioners do not use internet at all. These people together with those that use the internet but have limited knowledge all risk ending up in what Internetstiftelsen calls an “extended alienation”. They lack the knowledge to be able to use all the functions the internet has to offer, and to use digital services provided by the government. The research shows that they have a hard time downloading and using Bank-ID and few understand how to change cookie consents.
