Worldwide number of Internet users reaches 4.9 billion at end of 2021: report

The number of Internet users worldwide hit 4.9 billion at the end of 2021, accounting for about 63 percent of the world’s population, according to the Annual Report on China’s Mobile Internet Development (2022) issued by the Research Institute of the People’s Daily Online on June 29, 2022.

(Photo/People's Daily Online)

The number of Internet users surged by an additional 800 million, representing a 19.5 percent increase from 4.1 billion in 2019, the year that the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic began, the report said, citing data from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). In 2020, the number of Internet users grew by 10.2 percent, the largest increase in a decade, driven by developing countries where Internet use rose by 13.3 percent.

Between 2019 and 2021, Internet use in Africa, the Asia-Pacific region, and other underdeveloped countries jumped by about 20 percentage points. In 2021, growth in the number of global Internet users returned to a more modest 5.8 percent, in line with pre-pandemic rates.

However, today some 2.9 billion people remain offline, 96 percent of whom live in developing countries. Some 390 million people are not even covered by a mobile broadband signal.