BERLIN (dpa-AFX) – Since the outbreak of the corona pandemic, people in Germany have been spending significantly more time in front of screens than before. According to a representative survey by the digital association Bitkom, which was presented in Berlin on Tuesday, the average time in front of the screen per person has increased by two hours to ten hours a day. The time with the smartphone and the hours in front of a computer monitor or television were added together.
According to the survey, there was a particularly strong increase in video streaming, video telephony and online shopping. People now spend an average of almost an hour a day (57 minutes) watching streamed videos, films or series, 24 minutes more than before the corona pandemic. The increase in video telephony was even greater: in the time before Corona, private video calls were made every day for just 5 minutes, now it is almost half an hour (27 minutes).
Online shopping is also driving up screen time. People in Germany spend an average of 24 minutes a day shopping online, fifteen minutes more than before Corona. “During the corona pandemic, digital technologies kept life going, both professionally and privately,” said Bitkom President Achim Berg.
However, the survey also found that people want to reduce their screen time to an average of 7.6 hours per day after the end of the corona-related restrictions, thus bringing it below the pre-crisis level. Berg: “Whatever the future development will be: more than one in five households has prepared for continued intensive Internet use and has switched to a more powerful broadband connection because of the pandemic.”
It is all the more disappointing that the administration is lagging so far behind in digitization, said the association representative. Two years after the outbreak of the corona pandemic, every authority should actually be able to be operated by its employees from the home office. “But that is far from the case.” In Germany there is a lack of a digital infrastructure that is used jointly by the federal government, the federal states and the municipalities. “Instead, everyone here cooks their own little soup.” The administration in Germany also does not use modern IT concepts such as cloud computing to the required extent./chd/DP/mis