The internet is a phenomenon that affects our lives like nothing else. We can easily decipher this from the way we spend our days. As soon as we turn off our alarms on our phones in the mornings, we switch to our instant messaging apps to see if any of our loved ones tried to contact us during the time that we were sleeping.
While preparing ourselves for the day, we ask the internet about the weather outside to decide which clothes to wear. During our commute, we use the global network to find the shortest possible route to our workplaces. At our offices, we use the internet not only to communicate with our colleagues and loved ones but also to run useful online tools such as Grammarly or VPNs.
Once back from our workplaces, we go online to stream our favorite shows and movies on various streaming websites like Netflix. However, all these things require an active internet connection and it would be a great choice if you opt for one of the best provider options in the U.S. with Xfinity Internet for blazing fast internet speeds and great reliability.
Coming back to the internet, when something really has such a great impact on us, it is a must that it comes up in family conversations often. While some converse on the impact of the internet on different segments of the population such as kids, others discuss the history of the phenomenon.
Yet another section of the human race likes to explore the number of people using the global network. Are you one of the latter? This article is just for you! From here on, we will be discussing the prevalence of the global network, the challenges faced in measuring that prevalence, and how the phenomenon has grown over the years.
The Current Figure
The amount of people using the internet currently has crossed 5 billion and is currently at 5.3 billion. To give you some context, considering the total number of people living on the face of this Earth amounts to eight billion, the internet has spread to more than half of the global population. You may be wondering where we found this figure of 5.3 billion, which is 65% of the world’s population.
This is expected to reach 6.54 billion by the year 2025, which isn’t very far.
Well, you can rest assured that this figure is credible as it came from Internet World Stats – a reputed statistics company solely dedicated to publishing data related to the Internet. Moreover, Internet World Stats is not the only famous website that gives us this information; you can find similar figures on other reputable websites such as Statista!
Challenges to Determining the Figure
There are tons of challenges to counting the number of internet users. The majority of them exist on a much larger scale in the third world. Many families in that part of the world share mobile phones because of a lack of resources. That is why, instead of each family member being counted as an internet user, only one is. All this leads to an underestimation of the amount of internet usage.
The aforementioned challenge takes place when we count the number of internet users based on how many people own devices connected to the internet. Yet another way of finding out the number of internet users is by simply knocking on people’s doors and asking them about the number of users of the global network in their household. The challenge surveyors will face with this method is that many internet users do not even know that they actually are users of the internet because of a lack of knowledge of what is defined as the internet. For example, tons of people in the United States use the instant messaging app – WhatsApp – but very few will respond yes to the question “Are you a user of the internet?”
Growth Over the Years
The number of internet users has been growing for a while now. This can be seen from the fact that there were 16 million internet users in 1995. However, within the space of five years, in 2000, the number increased to 300 million. Today, as stated before, the number is around 5.3 billion. The increase in internet users can be attributed to a number of factors. One of the main ones is the increase in the supply of the global phenomenon!
Wrapping Up
We hope this article has helped you understand just how significant the Internet is to the world. You probably have an idea of how many people use the internet all over the world, showing how important the internet is in our daily lives! Can’t live with it, can’t live without it!
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