Baguettes and Bandwidth: Head to France to Live Your Best Digital Life
Take a moment to imagine where you might have a better quality of life. Did France spring to mind? It does have universal healthcare, affordable childcare, a high level of civic and social engagement, good work-life balance, and of course it’s home to beautiful countryside and arguably the most desirable city on earth, so that would be a natural place to think of.
But what you might not have added in is that it also has the highest digital quality of life, coming in at number one on Surfshark’s Digital Quality of Life Index.
The index measures the digital quality of life in countries based on internet affordability, internet quality, electronic infrastructure, electronic security, and electronic government in 121 countries. And, mon dieu, while France came in first this year, the United States came in nineteenth. It’s behind France, Finland, Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg, Spain, Estonia, Austria, Switzerland, Singapore, Sweden, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Romania, the United Kingdom, Japan, Israel, and Poland.
Comparing the two countries, internet affordability is what pulls the US down the most. France has the most affordable internet of the countries on the list while the US is 32nd, despite the two having almost the same quality of internet (France is fifth in quality and the US is sixth). The US edges out France a bit when it comes to electronic infrastructure and electronic government (how many government services are online) but when it comes to electronic security for citizens, France is far ahead.
This last part holds for Europe overall. GDPR protects the data of those who live in the EU far better than any data privacy laws look out for those in the United States.
The US' rank is a new low for the country.
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