90% of Italians are online but hate and fake news are a concern

90% of Italians access the Internet every day, 48% for more than 4 hours, and they do so primarily to search for information, then to get news on current affairs, politics and current events and then to communicate with friends (here the peak is among the great minors) and to enjoy audiovisual content. These are some of the most significant data from the report on 'The media and digital literacy needs' of Italians developed by Agcom and presented today at the headquarters of the Authority for the supervision of the communications sector.

In light of this practically universal use of the web (only 4% of the population over the age of 6 does not access it), 64.6% of Italians have no or little level of algorithmic literacy, that is, they are aware of the role played by the recommendation algorithms used by the main online platforms to direct the user towards certain content rather than others, but with a large gap between the elderly (35.9%) and young adults (73.3%).

Furthermore, the report reveals that more than 8 out of 10 Italians declare themselves generically concerned about various risky contents and activities, while more than 4 out of ten declare themselves very concerned about hate speech, various types of illegal contents, social challenges, cyberbullying, and disinformation.

Conversely, only 15% of citizens declare themselves very concerned about the presence of audiovisual content not protected by copyright.

Finally, 8 out of 10 parents regulate their children's access to media, while 13% impose an absolute ban and 4.8% leave total freedom of use. The most common rules (adopted by 2 out of 10 parents) are time limits and time slots in media use, parental monitoring of use, and blocking of specific content; 10.6% of parents change the privacy settings of their children's accounts, while only 12.5% ​​talk about their online browsing experience.