List of Internet Statistics and Key Figures
1. Internet Audience Growth
- In 2024, we count 5.25 billion Internet users in the world, or 66% of the population.
- The number of users is growing by 8.2% per year on average, much faster than the world population (+1.05%).
- Asia is the most connected continent with 2.8 billion Internet users, far ahead of Europe (705 million).
- Top 3 of the most connected countries: Denmark, Iceland and United Arab Emirates (98-99% of the online population).
Around the world, more and more people are connecting to the web.
With 1.1 billion users, the China has the largest number of Internet users, followed by India (658 million) and the United States (307 million). In some countries such as Denmark or Iceland, almost the entire population is now online. The web is emerging as a global mass media.
2. Rise of Mobile Browsing
- 4.32 billion people access the Internet from a mobile device, or 90% of Internet users.
- On average, mobile users spend 3h13 per day on the Internet from their smartphone.
- 51.53% of global web traffic comes from mobiles, compared to 47.04% for PCs and 2.63% for tablets.
- 80% of the time spent on social networks is on mobile.
Mobile has revolutionized the way we consume the Internet.
Thanks to smartphones, Internet users can connect everywhere, all the time.
Result: they now pass more time on the web from their mobile phone than from their computer. This trend is particularly marked on social networks, where 4 minutes out of 5 are spent on a phone.
The mobile phone became the first screen in the various market shares.
3. Social Media Domination
- 4.2 billion people are actively using social networks in France and around the world, that is more than half of humanity.
- Facebook remains the undisputed leader with 2.7 billion users, ahead of YouTube (2.3 billion) and WhatsApp (2 billion).
- Instagram is one of the favorite social media platforms for young people with 1 billion users, the majority of whom are under 34.
- TikTok is growing the fastest : 800 million users including 500 million active every month.
- Twitter has 330 million monthly active users worldwide.
- LinkedIn, the professional social network, has more than 720 million members.
- Pinterest has 459 million monthly active users around the world.
- Snapchat has 265 million daily active users, 75% of whom are under the age of 25.
- Reddit, the social discussion network, attracts 430 million active users every month.
- Twitch, a popular streaming platform for gamers, has 140 million active users per month.
Communicate, get information, have fun... Social media has become the favorite playground for Internet users on PC, Mac or mobile phones.
Each platform was able to find its audience, from teens addicted to TikTok on their mobile phones to professionals on LinkedIn to millennial fans of Instagram.
But all of them have a common point: a massive commitment and time spent on the part of users.
4. E-Commerce Expansion
- In 2024, 2.05 billion people buy online, i.e. 26% of the world's population.
- E-commerce turnover is expected to reach $3,914 billion in 2024 (+16.5% vs 2023).
- Amazon dominates the market with $280.5 billion in sales in 2023.
- 82% of online shoppers on the American continent pay by credit card.
Shopping online has become a reflex for a growing part of the world's population.
Driven by giants like Amazon or Alibaba, e-commerce continues to grow at double digits from year to year.
While some obstacles persist, such as shipping costs, considered too high by 63% of American buyers, the underlying trend is clear: Commerce is digitizing at breakneck speed.
5. Digitalization of advertising
- Digital advertising spending is expected to reach $530 billion in 2024, which is more than half of global advertising spending.
- Google and Facebook alone capture 56% digital advertising investments.
- 55% of digital advertising budgets are spent on mobile ads.
- 47% of Internet users use an ad blocker.
For a long time, advertising was the preserve of traditional media such as television or the press. But with the migration of audiences to digital, advertisers are following suit.
In 2024, digital advertising spending will exceed that of “traditional” media for the first time. A historic shift driven by platforms like Google and Facebook, but also by theThe rise of mobile advertising.
6. Emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT)
- In 2030, we will count 125 billion connected devices in the world, compared to 31 million currently.
- Global IoT spending is expected to reach $1.1 trillion in 2023.
- Health and industry will be the largest IoT markets with 30.3% and 40.2% of the shares respectively.
- In the long run, we will count on average 26 connected objects for every human on Earth.
Watches, fridges, cars... More and more everyday objects are connecting to form the Internet of Things (IoT).
A booming market that is expected to weigh more than 1.3 trillion dollars in 2025, driven by the health sector and industry. In the future, these billions of sensors should generate an astronomical mass of data, opening the field to new and ever more personalized services.
7. Evolution of the Number of Websites
- In June 2023, we counted 1,106,671,903 websites in the world. It is almost 40% less than in February 2018, where the number of sites reached an historic peak of 1,839,596,056.
- However, the number of active sites has continued to grow, reaching a new record of 202,900,724 in January 2023 (+2290% compared to the year 2000).
- In the 3rd quarter of 2023, it is estimated that 3,992,222 new sites were created every day, or 2772 per minute and 46 per second!
- But not all sites survive: Between May and June 2023, around 90,417 sites were removed per day.r.
Despite fluctuations, the number of websites continues to grow overall.
While the gap between active and inactive sites is growing, the creation of new sites remains dynamic with nearly 4 million sites being created every day. But The competition is tough and many don't make it through the first few months.
An ecosystem in perpetual renewal.
8. Top Domain Extensions
- .com remains the queen extension with 160.8 million domain names registered on September 30, 2023.
- .cn (China) and.de (Germany) complete the podium with 20.3 and 17.6 million domain names respectively.
- ccTLDs (country extensions) top 7 places in the Top 10: .uk (GB), .nl (Netherlands)...
- “New gTLDs” like.xyz or.online are popular for creating new sites in 2023.
Far ahead of the others, the .com is establishing itself as the reference web extension in the world.
But in the segment of geographic extensions (ccTLDs), some countries are doing well, such as China, Germany or the United Kingdom. A sign of the vitality of their national digital ecosystem. Also to watch out for: the breakthrough of new generic extensions on recent sites.
9. Predominant languages on the web
- 58.8% of websites are in English, far ahead of Russian (5.3%), Spanish (4.3%), French and German (3.7% each).
- A logical linguistic dominance: English is the most spoken language in the world (18.5% of the population).
- This is followed by Mandarin (14.5%), Hindi (7.7%) and Spanish (7.1%).
The overwhelming hegemony of English on the web is only a reflection of its status as an international language.
As the only lingua franca that can address a global audience, it has naturally established itself since the beginning of the web. But with the rise of Internet users from Emerging countries, the situation could change. Mandarin and Hindi, with a huge pool of speakers, have a card to play.
10. Cyberbullying: A Major Challenge
- 41% of adult Internet users have personally been victims of online harassment.
- 64% of young adults (18-29) have already been harassed on the Internet. This is the age group most affected.
- 77% of victims of online harassment have experienced it on Facebook, the leader in social networks.
- 49% of adults harassed online were because of their political opinions.
Behind the great opportunities of the Internet lies a darker side: cyberbullying.
From insults to physical threats to revenge porn, this scourge spares no category of the population, from teenagers to adults.
Social networks like Facebook or Instagram have become the favorite places for stalkers., taking advantage of the anonymity and virality allowed by these platforms. A major challenge to build a safer and more caring web.
11. Internet Connections Are Diversifying
Fixed broadband remains the main mode of accessing the Internet in the world, but mobile and alternative connections are gaining ground.
- In 2023, there were 1.2 billion fixed broadband subscriptions in the world (Statista)
- Optical fiber accounts for 32% of fixed broadband subscriptions in the world (OECD)
- The average fixed broadband speed reaches 113 Mbps worldwide (Speedtest)
Mobile has become the first way to access the Internet in many emerging countries.
- Mobile Internet connections account for 91% of Internet traffic in Africa (Ericsson)
- In 2023, there were 8.3 billion mobile subscriptions in the world, including 6.1 billion smartphones (Ericsson)
- 4G represents 58% of mobile connections in the world (GSMA)
- 5G is expected to reach 3.5 billion subscriptions by 2026, or 40% of the total (Ericsson)
Alternative Internet connections, such as satellites or stratospheric balloons, are developing to connect remote areas.
- Starlink, Elon Musk's satellite internet project, already has more than 10,000 users (SpaceX)
- Loon, Google's stratospheric balloon project, provided internet connection to over 300,000 people in Kenya and Mozambique before stopping in 2021 (Google)
Despite these advances, the digital divide remains a reality:
- 37% of the world's population, or 2.9 billion people, still do not have access to the Internet (ITU)
- In the least developed countries, only 27% of the inhabitants have access to the Internet (ITU)
- The average cost of a mobile broadband connection represents 18% of monthly income in developing countries, compared to 2% in developed countries (Alliance for Affordable Internet)
12. Search Engine: Google Domine
Google is the undisputed leader in search engines, its use represents an overwhelming market share of over 90%.
The Mountain View giant processes over 5 billion searches per day and indexes over 60 trillion web pages. Its dominance is explained by the relevance of its results, the speed of its responses and its refined interface.
Far behind, Bing and Yahoo have less than 10% of the market share. Bing processes around 900 million searches per day, while Yahoo processes nearly 500 million searches per day.
Faced with this dominance, alternative drivers are emerging and gaining in popularity:
- DuckDuckGo receives over 100 million searches per day
- Ecosia generated more than 150 million euros to plant trees
- Qwant, a French engine, has a use of more than 6 million visits per month
13. Web Visible vs Deep Web vs Dark Web
The visible web represents only 5% of the total content of the Internet, with over 1.9 billion websites indexed by Google. Every day, more than 500,000 new websites are created.
By comparison, the Deep Web, which is not indexed by traditional search engines, accounts for over 90% of total Internet content. It is estimated that it contains more than 7.5 trillion web pages, a volume of data 500 times greater than that of the visible Web.
The Dark Web, on the other hand, would only represent a use of 0.01% of the total content of the Deep Web.
- It is estimated that there are between 200,000 and 400,000 websites on the Dark Web
- 60% of Dark Web listings are linked to illegal activities
- The annual turnover of transactions on the Dark Web would exceed $850 million
Explosion of video on the Internet
YouTube, the leader in video streaming, has over 2 billion active users per month.
Users watch over 1 billion hours of video per day on the platform, with 500 hours of video uploaded every minute.
Netflix, a paid streaming giant, has over 200 million subscribers worldwide.
In 2023, Netflix subscribers watched over 6.1 billion hours of content, while the platform spent $17 billion producing original content.
According to Cisco forecasts, video will represent 82% of global Internet traffic in 2024.
Internet video traffic has already increased by 65% in 2023 (TeleGeography), and the number of videos viewed on the Internet is expected to exceed 100 billion per day in 2025 (Ericsson).
AI is Revolutionizing the Web Experience
Virtual assistants like Siri, Alexa, or Google Assistant are transforming the way we interact with the Internet.
- 55% of households should have a voice assistant in 2022 (OC&C Strategy Consultants)
- 20% of mobile searches are done via a voice assistant (Google)
- 35.6 million Americans will use a voice assistant in 2022 (eMarketer)
Chatbots, automated conversational agents, are increasingly used by businesses for customer service.
- 80% of businesses plan to use chatbots in 2024 (Oracle)
- Chatbots could save $8 billion per year by 2024 (Juniper Research)
- 90% of customer interactions could be managed by chatbots by 2025 (Servion)
According to Gartner, 85% of online interactions will be managed by AI in 2025.
The global AI market is expected to reach 190 billion dollars in 2025 (Markets and Markets), and 50% of businesses will use AI to personalize the customer experience by that time (Salesforce).
FAQs
How many active users does Facebook have in the world?
Facebook, the world's largest social network, has over 2.7 billion active monthly users.
What percentage of online purchases are made using a mobile device?
According to the latest statistics, more than 50% of e-commerce transactions in the world are carried out from a smartphone or tablet.
What is the share of digital advertising in global advertising spending?
In 2024, digital advertising accounts for more than 60% of global advertising spending, surpassing traditional media such as television and newspapers for the first time.
Conclusion
With these statistics, one thing is certain: The Internet has profoundly transformed our world and our daily lives. in the space of a few decades.
From social networks to e-commerce to advertising, digital technology has emerged as the new essential paradigm, challenging traditional players in the process.
But this digital revolution raises also numerous challenges.
How to ensure the security and confidentiality of data and the privacy of Internet users? How to fight against excesses such as cybercrime, cyberbullying or disinformation? What ethical framework should be defined in the face of advances in AI (artificial intelligence)?
Answering these questions will be essential to shape the internet of tomorrow.
An internet that is more inclusive, safer and at the service of the common good. This is the challenge of the coming years, to ensure that this great invention continues to be an opportunity for all of humanity.
