Youth on the ‘net
Media consumption

Youth on the ‘net

Gemius has looked into which websites are the most popular among people in the 15─24 age group in Poland, Turkey and Romania, and in Belarus, Ukraine and Hungary. The youth of these countries meet many of their needs online ─ they search for information, check the news, make contact with friends and use multimedia files, as well as shopping. Find out how young people live online. The study relates to traffic from personal computers (PCs).

The big three

Google, Facebook and YouTube rule in the Internet of the young (gemiusAudience). Among internet users aged 15─24, these three brands occupy, in various orders, the top three places of the most popular domains in Poland, Turkey, Romania and Hungary. In Ukraine and Belarus, instead of Facebook, the two other leaders are accompanied by Vk.ru, its Russian-language equivalent.

Knowledge from the Internet

The ranking of the top ten most popular websites among young internet users includes global and local search engines (such as Google, or Yandex in Turkey, Ukraine and Belarus). In many countries, the ranking features the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia. In the countries included in the study, young people also used local, general-informational services (Onet.pl, Op.pl, Mail.ru, Origo.hu, Milliyet.com.tr, Tut.by and Onliner.by), most of which offer the ability to create an e-mail account. Of these, it is Mail.ru that draws the biggest crowds of 15- to 24-year-olds (68.6 per cent of young internet users in Ukraine).

Entertainment and online shopping

Youtube, which dominates the popularity listings, is being overtaken by the competition. The youth of Poland and Hungary tend to use its local equivalents, i.e. Cda.pl (39 per cent of young Polish internet users) and Indavideo.hu (35 per cent of young Hungarian internet users). The film website Kinogo.club is popular in Ukraine and Belarus, frequented by 37 and 35 per cent, respectively, of young internet users.

Shopping also seems to fulfil an important online function for the young. In four of the six countries studied, the most popular sites included online shops and auction houses such as the international brands Alibaba and OLX, as well as Allegro.pl, Rozetka.com.ua and Jofogas.hu. The greatest interest in online shopping was found among young Poles (48.6 per cent of whom use Allegro.pl). Meanwhile, neither Turkey nor Belarus feature any online shops at all in their top ten most popular websites for young people.

Interesting exceptions

Turkey is the only country of those studied where the ten most popular websites for young users featured Instagram.com and Twitter.com. And then there is Romania, the only country where Netbet.ro, whose service includes poker games, enjoys significant popularity among the young, attracting almost half of all internet users in the 15─24 age group. The study shows that the internet encyclopaedia Wikipedia enjoys huge interest among Hungary’s young men ─ they constitute 66 per cent of the website’s users from the 15─24 age group. The data also shows the exceptionally high popularity of the online shop Alibaba.com among young Romanian males, who make up 60 per cent of its users from the 15─24 age group.

Internet youth

According to the UNESCO definition, ‘youth’ refers to people between the ages of 15 and 24. In most of the countries analysed, the division of internet users by gender tends to be about 50/50. The exception to this is Turkey, where females constitute 63 per cent of internet surfers in that age group. The predominance of urban over rural inhabitants is marked in Turkey, Hungary and Ukraine, averaging about 77.5 per cent versus 23.5 per cent. In this respect, Poland and Romania are very balanced ─ an average of 53 per cent of their young internet users are from towns and 47 per cent from rural areas.

This study relates to traffic from personal computers (PCs).