The number one concern about the Internet continues to be, it enables young children to access inappropriate content. There is also an upward trend in people being concerned about people becoming isolated from each other.
Concerns and safety
Concerns about things like misinformation remain significant but may have peaked last year, while concerns for children accessing inappropriate content remain high.
New Zealand's top concerns
Internet concerns over time: extremely / very concerned
This graph shows the percentage of New Zealanders who are either extremely concerned or very concerned (a combination of both) about certain aspects of the Internet. It shows the level of concern for 16 aspects of the Internet. The bars show these numbers overtime which include 2022, 2021 and 2020.
New Zealanders are embracing multi-factor authentication
Worryingly, use of pins or passwords on all devices has significantly dropped, but the nation is becoming more familiar with multi-factor authentication.
Do you use a pin or password on any or all of your devices?
Do you use two factor or multi-factor authentication on any or all accounts?
New Zealanders online security behaviours
Please note: zero values represent years where data was not collected for this particular category. View data in table format for more details.
This graph shows the percentage of New Zealanders who do particular things to keep themselves safe online. The bars show these numbers overtime which include 2022, 2021 and 2020.
Reporting concerning content
Only 4/10 New Zealanders know where to report harmful or concerning online content. Younger people are more likely to know where to report it, compared to other groups.
42% of people know where to report something online that might be harmful or dangerous.
Of these:
47%
Go to the police
34%
Go to Netsafe
Average number of concerns per group
We have some groups who have a larger number of concerns about the Internet. These are females, older New Zealanders, Māori, Pacific Peoples and Asian.
This graph shows the average number of concerns that particular groups of people have about the Internet. It shows that Pacific Peoples have a much higher level of concern about aspects of the Internet compared to the average number of New Zealanders.