Today, the digital association Bitkom published the results of a representative survey examining the use of messenger services on smartphones. The results show that 88 percent of German smartphone users make regular use of messenger apps such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Threema or others.
For this study, Bitkom Research conducted two surveys on behalf of the Bitkom digital association. On the one hand, 1,003 people in Germany aged 16 and over were interviewed via telephone about their use of messenger services on their smartphones. On the other hand, 998 parents of school-age children between the ages of six and 18 were asked how their children's teachers communicated with the parents.
These are further insights details:
- 88 percent of smartphone users in Germany use messenger services on their device – this corresponds to around 50 million people.
- In the age groups of 16- to 29-year-olds (100 percent) and 30- to 49-year-olds (96 percent), almost all consumers use one or more messenger services on their phone.
- Among the 50- to 64-year-olds, this share amounts to 88 percent while even among elderly consumes aged 65 and above almost half (45 percent) uses messenger services.
- The messenger service WhatsApp dominates among the estimated 290 billion messages that are being received in Germany this year.
- For example, 25 percent of parents of school-age children said that teachers contacted and informed them about school-related issues via WhatsApp. Other messengers were only used in four percent of the cases.
Bernhard Rohleder, Bitkom CEO, noted: "Messenger services are now the most frequently used means of communication. It is all the more important that communication via messengers can take place in an absolutely trustworthy and secure environment. The current discussion about the terms of use of WhatsApp has caused a lot of uncertainty. We are currently experiencing that the data protection debate, which is often based on purely theoretical risks, tends to lead to more uncertainty instead of more clarification. Clearer explanations by both the providers and the data protection authorities would really help users."
Source: Bitkom
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