May 30, 2025 Results of the 2024 Communications Usage Trend Survey

　The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) has compiled the results of a “Communication Usage Trend Survey,” which investigated the usage state of information and communication services in households and businesses at the end of August 2024.
　The detailed survey results will be posted in the "Information and Communications Statistics Database" and "e-Stat, " and data on the posted content will be opened to the public in a data format suitable for machine-reading applications (in CSV).
　(URL: https://www.soumu.go.jp/johotsusintokei/statistics/statistics05.html )
* CSV data is available only in Japanese

[Main points of the survey results]

1 With regard to smartphone ownership, 90.5% of households own a smartphone, roughly the same as the previous year, while the percentage of individuals owning a smartphone has increased to over 80%. On the other hand, the percentage of households owning TV receivers continues to decline and is now nearly the same as that of smartphone ownership.
2. Regarding the purpose of using the Internet, "using social media, including free call functions" was the most common purpose, at 81.9%. Regarding usage by age group, "posting videos or using sharing sites" ranked highest among those aged 6 to 12, whereas "sending and receiving emails" ranked highest among all age groups aged 50 and older.
3. The percentage of businesses introducing telework was 47.3%, allowing continued to decrease from the previous year. Among the reasons for introducing work-from-home practices, "response to COVID-19 infection" decreased from the previous year, while "improvement of work-life balance of workers" and "improvement of work efficiency (productivity)" increased.
4. More than 80% of companies use cloud services. Regarding the reasons for using cloud systems, the percentage for "payroll, financial accounting, and human resources" and "schedule sharing" increased from the previous year, and to over 50%. Additionally, 88.2% of companies responded that the use of cloud systems was effective.
5. About 70% of Internet users experience some anxiety when using the Internet. The number of people aged 13 to 39 who felt anxious about using it increased significantly from the previous year.

[Survey outline]

　The Communications Usage Trend Survey targets households (whole households and their members) and corporate. It has been conducted as a general statistical survey based on the Statistics Act (Act No. 53 of 2007) every year since 1990 (the corporate survey was added in 1993 and has been conducted every year since then except 1994. The household members survey has been conducted since 2001). In addition, the household survey has targeted on a prefecture-by-prefecture basis since 2010.