During the lockdown, the share of time spent by Italians in digital tools related to communication, social media and streaming grew by 11%. The strongest growth was that of Baby Boomers (+ 16%). Furthermore, by analyzing the time spent on-line, generations have expressed a growth in interest in different areas: more Fitness for Generation Z, more on-line shopping and PA-related services for more mature consumers.
GfK activated a weekly 360 degree monitoring at the end of February to analyze the effects of Coronavirus on markets, consumers and the media. Analyzing the evolution of the use of multimedia contents as a result of the lockdown, some interesting trends emerged on how the digital habits of the different generations have changed.
Overall, the time dedicated to Digital grew significantly during the lockdown and the Italians took advantage of digital tools to break isolation and continue to inquire, entertain, communicate and cultivate relationships.
In particular, according to the passive data collected through GfK Sinottica *, in the period between 21 February and 12 April the share of time dedicated to digital tools related to communication (for example for chats and video calls), to social media and audio and video streaming grew.
The highest increase in terms of time spent was between Baby Boomers (+ 16%) and Generation X (+ 14%), who probably used these digital tools less frequently before the lockdown and who had to equip themselves to communicate remotely, for needs related to smart working or the maintenance of social relationships. In younger generations, already used to spending a lot of time on these aspects of digital life, the increase has been smaller: + 9% for Millennials and + 3% for Generation Z. Considering the total time spent on digital during the lockdown, Generation Z is spending more time than usual on Fitness, Large-Scale Distribution (including shopping) and everything related to the Kitchen. Millennials have increased the on-line time dedicated to cooking, large-scale retailing and daily information. Even for Generation X the most significant increase in time in the digital sphere concerned the Kitchen, but in second place we find the digital tools of the Public Administration (on-line PA) and in third place the Large-Scale Distribution. The ranking for Baby Boomers is still different, which have increased above all the on-line time dedicated to large-scale distribution, followed by online PA and the non-profit sector.
