Impact of Coronavirus on E-Commerce in Finland, 2021

Nowadays, the use of the internet is slowly becoming more widespread in Finland and exclusively in the oldest age groups. The share of those who use the internet daily, or almost daily, grew among those aged 65 to 89 (by 6 -7 percentage points). Among the entire population aged 16 to 89: 93 % used the internet and 82 % used the internet several times a day.

According to the survey of Statistics Finland the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted on the internet behaviors of Finns in the current 2021 year in the following way:

• 57 % of Finns aged 16–89 had bought something online in the last 3 months.
• The number of online shoppers is growing rapidly only among persons aged 65 or older; among those younger than that, the vast majority repeatedly buy goods and services online.
• The most popular e-commerce product groups were clothing, shoes, accessories, gambling, restaurant food delivery, watching or downloading movies and TV series online, and listening to the music online.
• The share of those having used e-mail increased among those aged 65 to 89. Mobile messaging also became more common in these age groups.
• Internet and video calls, which had increased their popularity in previous years, became more common only among persons aged 75 to 89. In other age groups, the proportion of those having made internet and video calls decreased.
• Social media services became more common also mainly among those aged 75 to 89.
• The share of readers of online papers (magazines) and news sites of television companies remained unchanged.
• The share of those persons who watching online services of television a little bit increased (2 percentage points to 76%). The share increased the most in the older age groups.
• The share of podcast listeners grew by 2 percentage points to 33%.
• The share of those listening to the audio books decreased in the age groups under 44 and grew among persons older than that. But, of the whole population, the share of those having listened to the books remained unchanged at 23%.
• The pandemic had an impact on the use of information technology at work and in studies: 58% of employed persons said they had worked from home in the past 12 months.

In this survey, data were collected on checking the truthfulness of information on the internet. In the last three months, 63 % of Finns had seen information and content on the internet which they considered untrue or suspicious. Young people find suspicious content more often than old people. Nearly one-half of those who encountered upon false or suspicious information or content had checked the truthfulness of the information, young people a little bit more frequently than the old ones.

The full information and the source text can be found at Statistics Finland website.