Italians and the Internet: a love/hate relationship

Articolo disponibile anche in: Italian

The relationship between Italian people and the internet hasn’t been without strain. Our culture has not always been open to new things and novel ways to see reality. And multimedia technologies, such as the ones used on the web, haven’t been easy to adopt.

The web is hardly a novelty anymore, but at first Italian people struggled to adjust to a fast-changing reality. They found it hard to embrace this ‘virtual’ revolution and have found themselves, to certain extent, unprepared.

We can say that today people have finally become more comfortable with the idea of surfing the Internet on a daily basis and using the Internet for different purposes.

A research by Censis confirms the fact that the Internet has become indispensable for Italian people, who use it daily.

Social media and streaming are of primary importance, given that in Italy the web is used above all to watch movies, TV series and sporting events; even more so this year with the Dazn platform streaming many Serie A football games. In second place is e-commerce, especially travel, technology products, entertainment and services.

There are also many people who entrust their money and investments to the web; online banking has become widespread, and the number of people who invest using online trading platforms is increasing. This trend, unthinkable until a few years ago, has now become commonplace.

Another point worth highlighting is that today multimedia content is consumed primarily via portable devices, such as smartphones and, to a lesser extent, tablets.

In short, Italians are increasingly active users of web content thanks to mobile technology, and Italy as a country now has the third highest number of mobile device users in the world. Over half of these users periodically access social platforms, principally Facebook.

Internet is becoming more and more indispensable and it’s used daily; the trend has now inevitably been reversed compared to a few years ago, when the mistrust towards this revolutionary tool was quite evident.