O cell phone for personal use is present in the lives of 160.4 million Brazilians aged 10 or over. The number represents 86.5% of the population in this age group in 2022, a higher percentage than estimated in 2021 (84.4%).
The data is part of the research “Pnad Contínua: Access to the internet and television and cell phone ownership 2022”, released this Thursday (9) by IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics).
While 88.9% of people living in urban areas had a cell phone for personal use, among people in rural areas this percentage was 71.2%.
Regarding gender, 88% of women and 85% of men had a cell phone for personal use in Brazil.
There was an increase in cell phone ownership during the period covered by the research, ranging from 77.4% of the population aged 10 or over, in 2016, to 81.4%, in 2019, until reaching 86.5%, in 2022. In 2021, the percentage of people who had the device was 84.4%; a growth of 2.1 percentage points is noted in 2022.
In regional terms, the lowest percentages in 2022 occurred in the North (78.5%) and Northeast (80.5%) regions, while the others presented percentages ranging from 89.7% to 91.5%.
Regarding people who had a cell phone for personal use, Pnad Contínua investigated whether the device had access to the internet — currently, cell phones are the most used equipment to access the network.
From 2021 to 2022, in the population aged 10 or over who had a cell phone for personal use, the proportion who had access to the internet through this device increased from 94.8% to 96.1%.
In the rural area, this indicator increased by 3.4 points, from 89.1% to 92.5%, a lower growth than in the urban area, which went from 95.5% to 96.5%.
By age groups
In the country, in 2022, the percentage of people who had a cell phone for personal use, in each age group, had its minimum recorded in the group between 10 and 13 years old (54.8%), rising abruptly among people aged 14 to 19 (84.7%).
The highest participation occurred in the groups of young adults aged 25 to 29 (94.8%) and aged 30 to 39 (94.9%).
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In the following age groups, the percentage gradually declined until that of middle-aged adults, aged 50 to 59 (89.6%), ending with a sharp drop among the elderly aged 60 or over (73.7%).
Between 2021 and 2022, there was an increase in the percentage of people who had a cell phone for personal use in all age groups, with emphasis on the two youngest groups, from 10 to 13 years old and from 14 to 19 years old, both with expansion in 3.4 points.
Existence of a telephone at home
In 2022, there was no telephone in 2.8% of permanent private households (2.1 million) in the country, a reduction of 0.2 percentage points compared to 2021. The absence of a telephone remained higher in households in the regions Northeast (5.3%) and North (4.4%), while in the others it did not exceed 2%.
Considering the type of telephone, in 2022 there was a conventional landline telephone in 12.3% of households in the country, and this percentage has shown a decline since 2016 (32.6%). The share of households that had a cell phone, on the other hand, increased from 96.3% to 96.6% between 2021 and 2022.
Households in rural areas had a lower percentage, compared to those in urban areas, of both cell phones (90.8%, compared to 97.4%) and conventional landlines (3.9%, compared to 13.5%). ).
The presence of mobile phones was more universal across regions of the country, ranging from 94.5% of households in the Northeast to 98.5% of households in the Central-West; the presence of a conventional landline telephone showed greater regional differences.
In 2022, the Southeast had the highest percentage of households with a conventional landline telephone (18.2%), while this was only 3.9% and 4.6% in the North and Northeast regions, respectively.
The real average per capita monthly income of the portion of households that did not have a telephone was well below that observed in those that did have a telephone. In the country, in 2022, the average income of households that did not have a telephone (R$841) represented 48.7% of the income seen in those that had a telephone (R$1,727).
In households where there was a conventional landline telephone, the average income was R$2,951, while in those with a mobile phone this income was R$1,727, a value 41.5% lower.
Mobile Network Service
From 2016 to 2022, there was an increase in the number of households in which it was reported that the cellular mobile network service worked for internet or telephony, which occurred in both urban and rural areas.
The result of this indicator for the rural area remained lower than that for the urban area. During this period, in the total number of households in the country, the percentage of those in which the cellular mobile network service worked, for internet or telephony, went from 86.2% to 92%, in total; from 89.7% to 95.2%, in urban areas; and from 63.7% to 69.4%, in rural areas.
