This map shows the share of the European population that has (as of 2021) never (!) used the internet
This map shows the share of the European population that has (as of 2021) never (!) used the internet
(Originally published earlier today on mastodon.au)
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Actually, no, I don’t think it shows that. A few examples: Your map shows that in Serbia, Kosovo and Romania there’s some of the most people at risk of poverty, but most of their regions have higher internet adoption rates than the surrounding regions. It shows southern Spain to be much worse of than Portugal, but in the internet map Portugal had much lower internet adoption. West-Poland is apparently richer than east-Poland, but one of those richer western provinces had some of the lowest internet adoption rates in Poland.
I think you’re missing the forest for the trees. An entire country at a fairly high risk for poverty is very different from one high risk region and one low risk region of a country, in regards to the distribution of internet access. Additionally these maps are measuring different things, not everything is going to line up perfectly. You have to look at the overall trend, which shows a general tendency for Internet access to be linked to wealth.
I’m not trying to read something that isn’t there. Poverty does cause negative consequences and it will show in statistics, but here at least, poverty does not seem to be the dominant factor.
The internet adoption map mostly shows 3 correlations:
- A political one along national borders. That for example Romania and Kosovo have relatively high internet adoption and Greece + Portugal don’t, is caused by government policy, not because of wealth: Greece + Portugal are still far wealthier than the other two.
- A division within countries whereby the capital region has higher internet adoption rates than other regions. The capital region usually has a higher gnp per capita (not in Poland apparently though), but it also usually has more immigration of young people.
- And another trend within countries, whereby regions with declining + aging populations (Fe Saarland + southern Italy + former east Germany) score lower.
But the one that clearly dominates is 1) Government policy. You can have 2 regions with similar demographics + wealth and a national border between the 2 regions, and the internet adoption rate between the 2 can be vastly different, a far bigger difference than between 2 regions within the same country.
Your attempt at discrediting my obversations as looking at trees in a forest is cute, but it’s not going to fly. You can’t claim that a forest is boreal and then if someone observes that it contains palm trees, proclaim that they’re not allowed to look at the trees.
Agree to disagree then. I’m not interested in arguing with someone who chooses to take offense over a metaphor.
Again you resort to a personal attack instead of trying to argue with facts. Cute.