1 June 2001
Inquiries: Mr Juha Nurmela +358 9 1734 2548, e-mail:
juha.nurmela@stat.fi
Director in charge: Mr Risto Lehtonen
Mobile phone as an everyday tool
The mobile phone has taken up a permanent position in people's life, but for the computer and information networks the road has been very bumpy indeed. User friendliness of the mobile phone has made its users accept or forget its higher price. The computer and information networks have managed to find a natural place in people's everyday activities nowhere near as generally as the mobile phone, which is a means of personal interaction. The essential question for the continuing development of the information society is whether anything could be found in the information networks that would motivate people to use them more.
These results appear from Statistics Finland's report "Three Years of the Information Society". The survey examines people's attitudes to the information society by means of an interview survey, the evolvement of the mobile phone into an everyday tool, and why the computer and network connections have not developed into similar means as the mobile phone. The survey also concerns the advance of Finns' communication skills.
The survey is based on panel data of 1,200 persons where the same respondents took part in the interview survey both in 1996 and 1999. The results illustrate, for example, how the respondents' skills have improved in three years, how their opinions have changed and how regular the use of the mobile phone and information networks has become.
Further details: The report in English "Three Years of the Information Society. A Longitudinal Survey of the Use Made of Modern Information and Communications Technology in Finland"( Reviews 2001/4).