90 percent of young people surf multi-track
Over 70% of Swiss online users use the internet on two or more devices, and this figure rises to 90% among young people. This is shown by the latest publication of the Net-Metrix-Base internet study.
The latest Base study shows the number of devices used for internet access for the first time. It is not surprising that with the current boom in smartphones, tablets and e-book readers, the proportion of single-device users is relatively low: only 27.5% of all online users in Switzerland are always on the Internet with the same device. This figure is much lower among younger users. Around 93% of 14-19 year olds surf with two or more devices. Among 20-29-year-olds, the proportion of multi-device users is also quite high at 86.2%. Most single-device users are found in the over 50s, where every second online user "only" uses one device to access the internet.
Roughly the same number of men and women across all age groups surf the internet on one device - be it a laptop, tablet or smartphone. There is a clearer difference between the sexes in the proportion of internet users who use three or more devices to access the internet: 48.2% of men fall into this category, while just under 38.1% of women use at least three devices to surf the web. However, the biggest gender difference is due to the fact that there are still more female offline users among the overall female population: the proportion here is just under a fifth (19.1%), compared to 10.3% of men.
Swiss men and women use the web primarily for e-mails (92.5%), to obtain information via search engines (92.4%) or to find out about the latest news (75.6%). There is a clear difference, especially when it comes to finding out about the latest news: 80.4% of men and 70.5% of women consume this type of news on the web. In contrast, women are slightly ahead when it comes to using social media services. A good 50 percent of female web users are on platforms such as Facebook or Xing, compared to 1.3 percent fewer men.
