In 2024 fully 5.5 billion people are online. That represents 68 per cent of the world population, compared with 65 per cent just one year earlier.[1] The year-on-year growth rate is itself increasing, from 2.7 just one year ago to 3.4 per cent this year. But the same figure tells us that 2.6 billion people, one-third of the global population, are still offline. Universal connectivity remains a distant prospect.
Internet use remains tightly linked to the level of development. In high-income countries[2] 93 per cent of the population uses the Internet, approaching universality.[3] This contrasts starkly with the situation in low-income countries, where only 27 per cent of the population is online. While the annual growth rate in these economies averages 8.5 per cent in 2024, higher than in any of the other groups or regions, this is not sufficient to close the gap anytime soon.
In Europe, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), and the Americas, between 87 and 92 per cent of the population use the Internet. In the Arab States and Asia-Pacific countries, approximately two-thirds of the population (70 and 66 per cent, respectively) do so, in line with the global average. By contrast, the average figure for Africa is just 38 per cent.
Universal connectivity also remains a distant prospect in the least developed countries (LDCs) and landlocked developing countries (LLDCs), where only 35 and 39 per cent of the population are online, respectively.
[1] See Methodology section for details about the computation of estimates. Estimates for previous years may differ from those published in previous editions due to new and revised data submitted by Member States.
[2] In this publication, regions correspond to the ITU regions, whose composition is available at http://1f8a81b9b0707b63-19211.webchannel-proxy.scarabresearch.com/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Pages/definitions/regions.aspx. The composition of least developed countries (LDCs), landlocked developing countries (LLDCs), and small island developing States (SIDS) is available at https://www.un.org/ohrlls/. Income groups are according to the World Bank classification: https://datahelpdesk.worldbank.org/knowledgebase/articles/906519 .
[3] Taking into account that some people may never want to connect, as a matter of convention universality is taken to mean an Internet penetration rate of at least 95 per cent.