Today after three years I have put the tie back on. I had to go to the Senate for the presentation of the Auditel-Censis report, one of the best researches to understand how we are changing (the result of twenty thousand family interviews, a monstrous number). The researchers say that in Italy there are almost 120 million screens and this would confirm the centrality of TV. But in the screens here everything counts: old televisions, smart TVs, smartphones and tablets. Epper the TVs are always the same, 43 million, while smartphones are growing (48 million, + 8.9 percent). And with the smartphone it is true that I can watch a TV program, I do it, but if there was a ranking it would be the last thing I do after chatting, reading, listening, buying, talking and informing myself.
The TV on the other hand is about to become a very large smartphone itself, the control room of the famous smart home, for the few who already have it. In short, the discussion on what is really central is more complex. And it passes through a generational break that appears increasingly evident. Four million Italians follow traditional TV programming on their smartphones, says the survey: but it does not say whether children still watch Rai, Mediaset and La7 or if their universe is now all within the galaxy of Netflix, Amazon and Dazn.
Two more flying thoughts. The first: it is true that with covid we have made a great digital leap forward. But not all: those who were at zero remained at zero, excluded. We are talking about 2.3 million households without a connection and 8.4 without a PC or tablet. It is a huge fact. I repeat: a serious plan of inclusion is urgent. Finally, the survey has the advantage of measuring the digital use of children between 4 and 10 years old for the first time: two out of three are online every week. But are parents aware of the risks they run and the tools that already exist to protect them?
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