The latest survey by the Balkan Barometer revealed that overall, Albanians from Albania were less connected to the digital world. The innovation of recent years with Artificial Intelligence and ChatGPT does not find use among the country's citizens, according to the Balkan Barometer 2024 survey that was carried out by the Regional Cooperation Council.
Of the respondents in Albania, only 4% claimed to have used ChatGPT. Kosovo and North Macedonia had the highest percentage of citizens using Artificial Intelligence with 20 and 13% each. In contrast to Albania, the citizens of Kosovo were the biggest users of Artificial Intelligence in the Region. In Montenegro, about 7% of the population use Artificial Intelligence and in Serbia, 6%.
Albania also has the lowest percentage of citizens who buy goods and services online. According to the survey in 2024, only 27% of Albanian citizens had made online purchases against 36% which was the regional average. On the contrary, Kosovo leads, where 44% of its citizens have declared that they have made online purchases in the last 12 months. Also in Bosnia, 38% of citizens stated that they have made online purchases and 37% of citizens in North Macedonia.
At slightly lower levels were Montenegro and Serbia, where respectively 32 and 35% declared that they had made purchases from the Internet. Albania also had the lowest percentage of citizens watching Netflix (A US venture that offers streaming mainly movies and video on demand, with over 277.7 million paid subscriptions in more than 190 countries as of July 2024).
The survey found that 12% of Albanian citizens watch Netflix, the lowest percentage in the Region. In contrast, Kosovo had the highest percentage in the region with 38% of respondents following the American broadcaster of paid movies and videos. After Kosovo, Netflix has a high viewership in Montenegro where 25% of citizens follow this network, followed by Bosnians with 20% and Macedonians with 17%. Serbia also has low visibility of this network, with only 14%.
In general, the citizens of Albania have shown a low familiarity with digital services, except for government services that, as the survey shows, are the biggest users in the region because many of them are offered online.
Article originally published in Monitor Magazine
