The woman walking through the local market was texting while walking

In Jakarta, it feels as if everyone owns a smartphone. Market vendors check their screens whenever customers disappear, commuters scroll while weaving through traffic, and even a woman threading her way through the stalls in Glodok managed to walk and swipe at the same time. Add to that the omnipresent roar of Gojek and Grab riders waiting for their next ping, and you could easily conclude that Indonesia has achieved near-total digital saturation.

Except it hasn’t. Not even close. National statistics place smartphone ownership at roughly thirty percent—an unexpectedly low figure for a country where the streets of the capital seem hypnotized by glowing screens.

Jakarta, of course, is its own ecosystem. Leave the capital and the number of smartphones drops sharply, as if someone has turned down the brightness on the whole country. For many Indonesians, a smartphone is still a luxury. To be fair, even in Japan a high-end phone can cost as much as a modest laptop; it’s hardly surprising that the price tag remains a barrier here as well.

And yet, despite this relatively low ownership rate, Indonesians spend an astonishing amount of time online. Nearly nine hours per day, according to surveys. That’s more than a third of the day devoted to the internet. At that point, one has to assume people are browsing while they’re meant to be working—or perhaps the browsing is the work.

Whatever the explanation, Jakarta’s streets offer a simple truth: even in a country where devices remain out of reach for many, the digital world has already wrapped itself tightly around daily life.

Jakarta on Google Map

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