The Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM) published today (May 31) the 2022 ICT Use and Access by Individuals and Households Survey Report. This survey was carried out during the phase of transition of pandemic to endemic, which has allowed the community to return to almost normal life after two years facing COVID-19. The findings of this survey will provide an overview of usage of ICT among the population.
DOSM reported that the household access to the internet increased to 96.0 per cent in 2022 as compared to 94.9 per cent in 2021. Household access to mobile phones, radios and televisions remains above 95.0 per cent. However, access to pay television broadcasts recorded a lower percentage of 76.9 percent (2021: 83.2%).
The use of the internet among Malaysians aged 15 and above has increased to 97.4 per cent (2022) as compared to 96.8 per cent (2021). The most popular internet activity in Malaysia is participating in social networks. The use of the internet has increased significantly for services related to finding information, communication, civics and politics, e-Government, entertainment, e-Commerce and other online services.
Activities related to services increased by more than 3.0 percentage points. The activities related to services are: finding information about goods or services, which increased to 92.5 per cent; uploading self-created content to a website (17.6%); managing a personal homepage (10.3%); performing tasks online to generate income (15.5%); Internet banking (74.8%); listening to radio online (72.8); watching television online (68.1%) and purchasing or ordering goods or services via e-Commerce (70.4%).
Based on this study, ICT skills which are one of the indicators monitored in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has also improved. Basic ICT skills activities such as copying or transferring files; use copy and paste techniques to duplicate or move within a document; and sending emails with files increased to 97.0 percent, 96.3 per cent and 89.4 per cent respectively.
Activities that require specific expertise, such as using basic arithmetic formulas in a spreadsheet and writing computer programmes using programming languages, increased to 67.1 percent and 23.5 per cent respectively. Other activities also increased, namely connecting and installing new devices (79.2%), searching, downloading, installing and configuring software (72.5%) and creating electronic presentations using computer software (62.9%).
