1.1.1 What do you do online?

The statistics from Activity 1 provide an interesting snapshot of the Internet in Myanmar, with most users accessing the Internet on their mobile phones. We also need to understand what they are doing when they use the Internet. We don’t have data on this yet for Myanmar, but as an example, Figure 1 breaks down activities carried out online in the UK and how they changed between 2007 and 2014.

Described image
Figure 1 Household internet activities
Show description|Hide description

Figure 1 shows a series of bar charts comparing the percentage of people carrying out different household internet activities in 2007 and 2014. Between 2007 and 2014 the percentage of people playing or downloading games, images, films or music has risen from 24% to 44%; the percentage of people internet banking has gone from 30% to 53%; the percentage of people using services related to travel or travel accommodation has risen from 42% to 43%; the percentage of people reading or downloading online news, newspapers or magazines has risen from 20% to 55%; the percentage of people finding information abour goods and services has risen from 58% to 73%; and the percentage of people sending and/or receiving emails has risen from 57% to 75%.

Household internet activities
Activity20072014
Playing or downloading games, images, films or music2444
Internet banking3053
Using services related to travel or travel accommodation4243
Reading or downloading online news, newspapers or magazines2055
Finding information about goods and services5873
Sending/receiving emails5775
Figure 1 Household internet activities

Activity 2

Consider the activities in Figure 1. How much time a week do you spend online carrying out the activities?

For each type of activity, think of one or two words that best describe how you feel about your experiences.

Finally, what skills do you use when you ‘go online’? For example, how do you decide whether something is safe or not? Do you examine a link in your email before clicking it? This could be really important in relation to internet banking or protecting your social networking accounts.

1.1 Living online

1.1.2 From going online to learning online