Girls’ Night In? Effects of the Kenyan COVID-19 Lockdown on Web Browsing

Abstract We present the first objective evidence on how COVID-19 lockdowns affected internet browser usage in Africa: We use detailed digital trace data on PC-based and mobile-based browsing patterns of 316 Kenyans who had access to a PC. Our data cover the period before and during Kenya’s first national COVID-19 curfew, which was declared on March 25, 2020. We find that total daily browser usage increased by 41 minutes, or 15 percent of average browsing time, after the curfew started. We find no significant differences in total browsing time during the curfew by gender or by residence in high-speed versus low-speed broadband access areas. However, we do find gender differences in the content of browsing. Women’s time on YouTube and Netflix exceeded men’s from the start of our sample period, and the gender gap in Netflix browsing increased by 36 minutes daily, which corresponds to almost twice the average daily Netflix time in the sample. Men’s browsing became less concentrated during the curfew, across both domains and topics– but women’s did not. The degree of overlap in browsing between men and women also increased: This was likely due to men visiting sites that were previously exclusively visited by women. Across the entire sample, browsing of Kenyan domains dropped significantly relative to that of non-Kenyan domains, which indicates greater reliance on international content during this period of economic and social upheaval.