Quick Answer 🔍
How many people use the internet daily in 2023?
5.07 billion people use the internet daily.
The internet became public in 1991, and it didn’t take long for people to adapt to it.
Over time, technology evolved and the benefits of using the internet became obvious.
More and more people took notice, and soon they made it part of their daily lives.
So, how many people use the internet daily now? We have some data and stats to help answer this question.
Before we dig into this topic, we need to interject some context into this article.
It’s obvious that the number of internet users has substantially grown since 1991, but how much and why?
As the internet grows, so does its usage and the technology behind it.
The online world has literally transformed how we connect to one another, how we share information with each other, and how we organize the flow of communications.
It’s clear that our digital landscape is constantly evolving and growing, but that fact isn’t the most interesting thing about the internet out there.
We have plenty to address on this topic to help you enjoy a deeper appreciation and understanding of all things internet.
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How Many People Use the Internet Daily in 2023?
The latest data affirms that globally, 5.07 billion people use the internet daily in 2023.
This figure demonstrates a 6.2% growth rate year-to-year, which is the fastest since 2019.
These current figures also show that there has been a steady increase of internet users at the global level over the past 10 years.
It is now two times more than the figure from 2014 which was 2.48 billion.
In 2015, global internet users reached the 3 billion milestone, though it took another three years to get to that extra billion plus when the figure in 2018 hit 4.02 billion daily internet users.
Even with these figures, there are still about 3 billion people across the globe who are not using the internet, whether it’s due to lack of access or desire.
More than 192 million users joined the ranks of internet users in the past 12 months.
The number of internet users is growing at about 4%, which accounts for over half a million new users every day.
Where Are the Most Daily Internet Users?
It would be difficult to bring clarity to this article if we didn’t include where the most daily internet users are.
In spite of the fact that the internet is more widespread across the globe providing access to more people in more countries, there are flagrant differences in its saturation in various locations.
Recent data shows that the number of worldwide internet users accounts for 62.5% of the world’s population.
That said, you should know that the penetration rates and internet usage are significantly higher in more developed areas.
Across most of North America and Europe, over 90% of their populations have access and use the internet.
That accounts for nine of every ten inhabitants of these countries being internet users. In the United States, over 80% of adults claim to go online daily.
On the other hand, only about one in four inhabitants of Eastern and Middle Africa are internet users. That is because these places have the lowest penetration rates for the internet.
Ergo, it’s inside these developing nations where the internet usage figures have grown the most.
In middle Africa, the number of internet users grew 21.3% between 2020 and 2021, which happens to be the highest of all these regions.
Growth in western Africa saw a 17.25 growth and eastern Africa a 10.2% growth.
In growth terms, the number of users in developed regions is lower. Northern America experienced only a marginal boost of only 3.4%, though the growth rate was only 1% in 2021.
China has the largest number of internet users at 1.02 billion users. Northern Europe experienced the highest penetration rate at 98%.
How Did the Pandemic Impact Internet Users?
We must factor in the recent COVID-19 pandemic and the global lockdowns that occurred due the virus.
Because the pandemic created challenges for face-to-face content and interviews, more job seekers and businesses started Zoom or other virtual interviews.
Therefore, the rates mentioned in this article may be higher than originally thought.
A majority of internet users turned to mobile device usage to the tune of 92.1% to go online and browse the internet. However, computer usage accounts for its own share of internet activity.
Schools, hospitals, doctors’ offices, workplaces, and other businesses had to adapt to the virtual world to keep things going.
The global impact of the pandemic created more challenges besides the sickness itself.
Were you subjected to the virtual realm for work, school, or personal purposes? If so, you are certainly not alone.
How and Where Are People Spending Their Time on The Internet?
Data from January 2022 confirms that 5.31 billion of internet users did so on their mobile phones.
Additionally, 4.62 billion of internet users were active on social media, which comes to about 58.4% of the total global population.
Social media is consistently growing, so you can expect to see higher numbers over the next few months going into 2023 and 2024.
To put this in perspective for you, it means that users of social media are growing at a pace of 13 new users each second.
There are already 93.4% of internet users on social media, which is the same as saying more than 9 of 10 internet users.
There are also seven social media platforms claiming to have over 1 billion active monthly users.
Did you know that over two-thirds of the global population uses a mobile phone? Counting smartphones, this accounts for nearly four in five of all mobile devices being used today.
How Do Internet Users Affect Ecommerce?
Internet users are making purchasing decisions based on recommendations from social media sites on mobile devices as well as laptops and desktops.
Almost six out of ten internet users between 16 and 64 years old buy products or services online each week.
More people are making purchases right from their smartphones nowadays over their computers.
In 2021, the amount of money spent online by the average ecommerce consumer came to over $3.8 trillion, which is 18% more than in 2020.
The average ecommerce shopper spends over $1,000 each year in online purchases.
The pandemic also impacted the ecommerce world, specifically in the travel realm. Travel spending fell by over 50% between 2019 and 2020.
The good news is that travel spending showed signs of rising by 7% in 2021 for booking flights. Also, hotel bookings rose by 45% during the same time in 2021.
The stats on ecommerce activities of internet users include 58.4% purchased a service or product online, 28.3% ordered groceries online, 14.4% of internet shoppers bought something second hand, 24.6% comparisoned shopped online, and 17.8% engaged in buy now pay later options.
These percentages represent internet users between the ages of 16 and 64.
Conclusion
It would be an egregious understatement to claim that the internet realm is enormous. We all know it’s massive.
The statistics around the number of people using the internet daily is just a small portion of all the data, facts, and statistics that can be discussed.
It would just be too much for one or two articles. If anything, it would take a lengthy series of articles to cover it all.
We hope these facts and figures have shown you at least a part of how the number of internet users impact the online world.
The pandemic played a pretty big role between 2018 and 2020 in activities by internet users.
It affected businesses, schools, medical facilities, law enforcement, family visits, ecommerce, and more daily activities of internet users.
The internet played a major role in keeping some businesses going, continuing education for students, allowing telemedicine to maintain some continuity for patients, and keeping people connected in whatever ways possible.
We hope this article has provided you with a new appreciation of the internet and how its role in the pandemic kept things going, though not in person.
Without the internet people couldn’t have interviewed for remote or on-site jobs.
Children would have fallen behind further in their education, college students would have had their education stalled, and buying things we needed would not have been possible without the internet.
What impact does the internet have on you? Are you one of the daily internet users? Do you use the internet for shopping, work, play, social media, or other things?
