Facebook is losing users in Switzerland among people under the age of 25, who are turning to Chinese video portal TikTok, according to a Digimonitor study carried out by the Link Institute on behalf of electronic media interest group IGEM and research media company WEMF. TikTok is currently growing at the fastest pace in the country, with the number of people using it having increased almost fivefold this year compared with the previous year.
Most of the 370,000 TikTok users in Switzerland are under 25 years old. TikTok has not yet reached the general population, with only 6 percent using it. Social media platforms have increased their number of users in general. Facebook and Instagram have added 350,000 new users. Forty-six percent of the Swiss population now uses Facebook. One third (33%) of the population is occasionally on Instagram. Instagram is particularly popular with young people aged under 25, too. Eighty-two percent of young people use Instagram and only 34 percent use Facebook.
Netflix has added 400,000 viewers during the Covid-19 pandemic and reached a total of 2.2 million users in Switzerland. Seventy-four percent of the population uses YouTube, ahead of or Netflix (35%), Disney + (5%), Twitch (5%), Apple TV Plus (4%) and Amazon Prime (2%). Smartphone users in Switzerland have increased by 600,000 in 2020, and 5.6 million people will have internet access on their smartphones this year, up to 88 percent of the total population. The use of smartphones by people aged over 55 years old has increased from 54 to 71 percent.
Half a million Swiss people now use a laptop at least occasionally, an increase from 4.3 to 4.8 million this year. In 2020, for the first time, more people will use a laptop (76%) than a desktop PC (69%). The TV set is and will remain the most widely used electronic device in Switzerland, with 92 percent of the total population that sit in front of the "box" at least occasionally, which represents a total of 5.9 million people.
Radio sets are used by 82 percent of the population, or 5.2 million people. Almost half of the population (47%) also listens to the radio via other devices, for example smartphone (24%), TV set (24%), on PC / laptop (20%) or tablet (4%).
The number of people wearing a smart watch rose by 200,000. Almost 700,000 people (11%) now wear a smart watch. Less than 3 percent of the population talks at least occasionally to a smart speaker like Amazon Echo, Google Home or Apple HomePod. This corresponds to only 160,000 people in Switzerland.
The Digimonitor survey ran from the beginning of April to the end of May of this year. The Link Institute surveyed 1,759 people, including 1,008 in German-speaking Switzerland and 751 in French-speaking Switzerland.
