New Publication: "Visualizing Age-Specific Digital Platform Usage in Germany"

Licia Bobzien, Roland Verwiebe and Fabian Kalleitner visualize age-specific digital platform use among the German population (n = 2,162), aged 18 to 74. They use data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Innovation Sample collected in 2023. A comprehensive overview is shown for (1) What platforms are different age groups using and for how long? and (2) What do different age groups do on digital platforms?

Figure 1. Digital platform use across age groups in Germany.
Source: SOEP-IS (2023) and authors’ own calculations.
Note: n(1a–1c) = 2,162, n(2a) = 2,046, n(2b) = 2,026, n(2c) = 2,054. Whiskers in (1a) and (1b) indicate 95 percent confidence interval. Information on the survey items and exact wordings can be found in the supplementary material.

Overall, this visualization shows that most people use digital platforms regularly, with younger age groups spending more time online and using a greater number of different platforms compared with older age groups. They show that younger individuals place more emphasis on information than on entertainment and state more often that they are actively posting, commenting, or sharing content, while older age groups are predominantly passive consumers on digital platforms.

The full publication in Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World is available here.