Internet use reaches almost 75% of the elderly, and children have less access to the network, says IBGE

Internet use among the population aged 60 and over rose from 70.1% to 74.5% between 2024 and 2025
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Although they are still the group that uses the internet least, Brazilians aged 60 and over recorded the biggest growth in internet access in 2025, according to the National Household Sample Survey, published this Thursday (2) by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).
Among the elderly, the proportion of internet users increased from 70.1%, in 2024, to 74.5%, in 2025. In relation to 2019, the increase was 29.6 percentage points.
According to the IBGE, the growth may be related to "the evolution in the facilities for using this technology and its dissemination in the daily life of society".
In the opposite direction, children aged 10 to 13 years old were the only age group to show a drop in internet and cell phone use.
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In this group, internet use fell from 84.9% to 84.4% in 2025. Among those who did not access the network, the main reasons were lack of need (33.8%) and concern about privacy or security (30.3%).
The behavior was similar in the use of cell phones: elderly people are the age group with the greatest growth, rising from 78.3% to 80.3% between 2024 and 2025, while use among children aged 10 to 13 fell from 56.7% to 55.2%.
Among children, the main reason given for the lack of cell phones was concern about privacy and security.
Internet use grows in Brazil
Overall, internet use reached 90.5% of the Brazilian population with 10 years or more in 2025, equivalent to 168.7 million people. In 2024, this percentage was 89.2%.
The main uses of the internet include making voice or video calls (95.3%), exchanging text, voice or image messages (90.2%), watching videos (89.3%), using social networks (84.9%) and listening to music, radio or podcasts (83.7%). Among users, 98.7% access the network via cell phone.
The survey also showed that urban areas continue to have greater access to the internet, but the difference in relation to rural areas has decreased over the last few years. The distance fell from 37.5 percentage points in 2016 to 8.5 percentage points in 2025.

Source: G1