According to official statistics, the proportion of people aged 16-74 who have ever used the internet was 94.7%, 2.2 percentage points more than the previous year. On the other hand, data revealed that about 800,000 Romanians aged over 16 have never used the internet, while well over half of them (over 640,000) are aged 55 to 74, another 114,000 non-net users are aged 35 to 54 and about 43,000 are aged 16 to 34, the same data show.
Statistical data also show that, in urban areas, 92.5% of households are connected to the internet, 9.3 percentage points more than the 83.2% share of households in rural areas. By territory, internet connection was more widespread among households in the Bucharest-Ilfov region (95.2% of households have internet access at home), followed by the West (92%) and North-West (90.2%). The lowest shares of households connected to the internet are recorded in North-East (85.1%) and South-East (85.2%) regions.
The number of people in households is an important factor in terms of internet connection. Compared to 2023, there was an increase in the share of households with internet access among households consisting of one person, by 4.8 percentage points, among those consisting of two people, by 3.9 percentage points, and among those consisting of three people or more people, by 0.6 percentage points.
Of the total number of people aged 16 to 74, the share of people who use or have ever used the internet was 94.7%, up 2.2 percentage points compared to 2023, of which 96.4% used the internet in the last 3 months. By frequency of internet use, among people aged 16-74 who used the internet in the last 3 months, 74% used the internet several times a day, and 19.5% used it once a day almost every day.
By development region, the highest share of people aged 16-74 who use or have ever used the internet was 97.7% in the Bucharest-Ilfov region, followed by the North-West region with 96.6% and the West with 96.5%. At the opposite end is the South-East region with 92.2%.
The shares of people using the internet decrease with age. Thus, in 2024, the share of people who use or have ever used the internet in the 16-34 age group was 98.9%, while for the 55-74 age group it reached 86.2%.
In 2023, the share of people in Romania aged 16-74 who used the internet in the last 12 months was 91.6%, 0.8 percentage points below the European Union average. Among the 27 EU Member States, in 15 countries the share of people aged 16-74 who used the internet in the last 12 months exceeded the European average, with the highest share being recorded in Luxembourg (99.4%). The other 12 EU Member States recorded shares lower than the EU average, with Hungary (91.8%) ranking just below the average, followed by Romania (91.6%), with Bulgaria (84%) at the bottom of the distribution. In 2023, Romania recorded an increase of 2.7 percentage points in internet use, in the last 12 months, among people aged 16-74.