4 Billion People on Earth Are Now Connected to the Internet

Over the past five years, the number of internet users worldwide has experienced significant growth. Data from We Are Social and Hootsuite recorded four billion people connected to the internet in 2018, compared to 2.4 billion in 2014. This figure indicates that internet penetration reached 52.96% of the global population of 7.59 billion. In 2014, global internet penetration was only 35% of the total population.

The average annual growth in internet usage was 11%, with the highest growth recorded at 21.2%, reaching 3 billion people in 2015 from 2.4 billion the previous year.

The rise of communication and information technology, coupled with the expanding reach of networks and lower prices of gadgets, has driven the increase in global mobile device and social media users. Mobile device users in 2018 grew by 67.63% to 5.14 billion, compared to 3.65 billion in 2015. Similarly, social media users in 2018 reached 3.2 billion accounts, a 42.1% increase from 1.86 billion accounts in 2014.