We Are Social and Hootsuite’s latest collection of Global Digital reports reveals that internet users are growing by an average of more than one million new users every day, with all of the original ‘Next Billion Users’ now online.
The number of people using the internet has surged over the past year, with more than one million people coming online for the first time each day since January 2018. It’s not just internet users that have been growing either, as the extensive new collection of Digital 2019 reports from Hootsuite and We Are Social reveals.
We’ll explore all of the key trends and insights from this year’s reports in detail in this article, but here are the essential headlines you need in order to understand ‘Digital in 2019’:
- There are 5.11 billion unique mobile users in the world today, up 100 million (2 percent) in the past year.
- There are 4.39 billion internet users in 2019, an increase of 366 million (9 percent) versus January 2018.
- There are 3.48 billion social media users in 2019, with the worldwide total growing by 288 million (9 percent) since this time last year.
- 3.26 billion people use social media on mobile devices in January 2019, with growth of 297 million new users representing a year-on-year increase of more than 10 percent
Before we get into the analysis though, I’d like to take a moment to thank all of the wonderful data partners who’ve made this year’s series of reports possible, in particular:
OK… all set for those numbers?
Internet users in 2019
I’m sure I say this every year, but 2018 really was another year of impressive growth across all things digital. However, perhaps the most compelling story in this year’s numbers is that internet user growth actually accelerated in the past year, with more than 366 million new users coming online since we published our Digital 2018 reports.
The standout story here is India, which has seen internet users jump by almost 100 million in the past 12 months, representing annual growth of more than 20 percent. Internet penetration in the South Asian country now stands at roughly 41 percent – a considerable improvement over the 31 percent that we reported this time last year.
Perhaps surprisingly though, the United States takes third spot in our global ranking of absolute internet user growth. Despite already enjoying an internet penetration rate of 88% this time last year, internet users in the US grew by almost nine percent year-on-year, reaching a total of more than 310 million users in January 2019 (95 percent penetration).
Meanwhile, African nations dominate the list of countries with the fastest growing internet communities, although many of these countries start from relatively small bases. Western Sahara saw the greatest year-on-year relative gains, with the reported number of internet users in the country increasing by almost five times since January 2018.
Five countries saw their internet populations double over the past 12 months, while nine countries experienced annual growth of 50 percent or more.
The number of internet users around the world has grown by more than 1.9 billion since our 2014 reports, an increase of more than 75 percent in just five years. This year’s total of 4.39 billion global users is also more than double the figure of 2.08 billion that we reported in our first Global Digital report back in January 2012.
Data from the ITU suggest that it took roughly 16 years for the internet to reach its first billion users, but just another six years for it to reach two billion. However, the data in our Digital 2019 reports suggest that the internet is now growing at a rate of one billion new users every 2.7 years. That rate isn’t sustainable of course – at some point, everyone in the world who wants to connect to the internet will do so – but I wonder if Tim Berners-Lee could even have dreamt of the fact that his handy little tool for sharing research findings would reach almost 4½ billion people by its thirtieth birthday.
Internet user behaviors in 2019
The ways in which people use the internet are evolving quickly too, with mobile accounting for an ever-increasing share of our online activities. I’ll dig into the specifics of mobile and app use in the dedicated mobile section below, but it’s worth noting here that mobile phones now account for almost half the time that people spend on the internet.
Just. Amazing.
The good news is that faster connections mean we’re achieving more in our online time. Ookla reports that average mobile connection speeds have increased by 18 percent since this time last year, while the speed of the average fixed connection has jumped by a third.
Twelve countries and territories now enjoy average fixed internet connection speeds of more than 100MBPS, while ten countries enjoy average mobile connection speeds in excess of 50MBPS.
Interestingly, the average mobile connection speed exceeds the average fixed connection speed in 44 out of 117 countries and territories for which Ookla reports data, and the average mobile connection speed is more than double the average fixed connection speed in 10 of those countries.
As you might expect, Google continues to dominate the rankings of the world’s most visited websites, with both SimilarWeb and Alexa putting the search giant at the top of their tables. Alphabet’s ‘other’ big platform – YouTube – comes in at number two on both lists, while Facebook takes third spot.
Social media platforms feature strongly on both companies’ lists, and it’s interesting to note that Twitter continues to show strong results in website rankings, despite its eroding user base (more on that in the social media section below).
That probably comes as little surprise, but the sheer amount of time involved may still shock you. Data from SimilarWeb suggest that, in 2019 alone, people will spend more than 1 billion days of collective human time on just the top 5 adult sites. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, the average visit lasts just over 10 minutes…
More broadly, video is becoming an increasingly important part of our internet activities. Google searches for the word ‘video’ increased by 30 percent over the past year, and the query now ranks fourth amongst all global queries, behind Facebook, YouTube, and Google. [As an aside, if you’re wondering why people search for Google on Google, it’s all to do with using the address bar as a search input].
GlobalWebIndex reports that 92 percent of internet users now watch videos online each month, meaning that more than 4 billion people around the world are consuming online video content in early 2019. For context, roughly 6 billion people around the world have a television set at home, based on data reported by the ITU.
People are spending an increasing amount of time watching other people play games online, too. The latest numbers indicate that almost a quarter of all internet users – more than 1 billion people – watch livestreams of other people playing games each month. Meanwhile, more than 700 million people will watch esports in 2019 – that’s double the number of people who watched Formula 1 in 2017.
The ways in which people ‘interface’ with the internet are changing too. The use of voice control tools increased significantly during 2018, with roughly four in every ten internet users now using voice commands or voice search every month.
Crucially, roughly half of all internet users in China and India now use voice control, and with these two markets being top priorities for developers, we can expect to see even stronger growth in the use of voice tech during 2019.
Social media users in 2019
Our full suite of Digital 2019 reports includes extensive insights into people’s use of the world’s top social platforms in more than 230 countries and territories around the world. These in-depth numbers tell a mixed story though, with some platforms showing impressive growth over the past 12 months, and others starting to lose ground.
Worldwide social media user numbers have grown to almost 3.5 billion at the start of 2019, with 288 million new users in the past 12 months pushing the global penetration figure to 45 percent. Social media use is still far from evenly distributed across the globe though, and penetration rates in parts of Africa are still in the single digits.
At the other end of the scale, North Korea continues to languish in last place in the global social media rankings, with a penetration figure of less than 0.1 percent. This is perhaps unsurprising though, considering that the internet – or at least the internet as the rest of the world knows it – remains blocked throughout the country. We also suspect that the figures for Turkmenistan may actually be higher than those reported here, but we have been unable to source data from the county’s top platform, imo.
African nations make up the remainder of the bottom 10 countries by social media penetration, and a number of countries across the region actually registered declines in social media use over the past 12 months.
Considering that almost 40 percent of the total population in some parts of Africa is below the age of 13, this has a meaningful impact on the overall social media picture. The number of social media users around the world at the start of 2019 equates to roughly 58 percent of the total ‘eligible population’, but this figure rises to more than 70 percent in almost 100 countries around the world.
The good news is that many countries have shown strong growth in social media use over the past 12 months. Just as in the internet growth rankings above, Western Sahara posted the fastest social media growth during 2018, with the number of active users in the country increasing by more than 4½ times [note: in the absence of other data, we use active social media user numbers as a proxy for internet users in Western Sahara, which is why the numbers are the same].
Ethiopia has also seen impressive growth this year, with an additional 2.3 million new users translating to annual growth of more than 60 percent. Encouragingly, Cuba has also witnessed strong social media growth this year, despite internet access remaining a challenge across the country.
Meanwhile, despite a flurry of restrictions on social media platforms in recent months, the number of people using social media in Iran has also grown considerably in the past year. The team at Techrasa and local social media expert Niki Aghaei both concurred that annual user growth is well into double digits, and even official government sources have reported strong growth.
While these figures are specific to social media users, they’re likely representative of broader internet use too, which suggests that women suffer from poor levels of internet access in many parts of the developing world. As an essential resource for education, financial inclusion, employment, and empowerment, ensuring more equal internet access for women must be a priority for the next phase of internet development.
Social media behaviors in 2019
The amount of time that people spend on social media has increased again this year, albeit very slightly. GlobalWebIndex reports that the average social media user now spends 2 hours and 16 minutes each day on social platforms – up from 2 hours and 15 minutes last year – which equates to roughly one-third of their total internet time, and one-seventh of their waking lives.
As with internet use, this time quickly adds up: if we extend this average daily time across all 3.484 billion people using social media today, we get a combined total of almost 330 million years of human time spent on social platforms during the course of 2019.
It’s worth noting that the time spent on social media varies considerably across cultures though, with internet users in Japan spending an average of just 36 minutes on social media each day. At the other end of the scale, Filipinos continue to spend the most time on social media, with this year’s average of 4 hours and 12 minutes reflecting an increase of 15 minutes per day (6 percent) versus the average that we reported last year.
Meanwhile, the average user now has an account on almost nine social media platforms, but they don’t necessarily engage with every one of these accounts each month. People are also increasingly using social media for work activities, with almost a quarter of users saying they’ve done so in the past month. If we extend this average to the total number of social media users around the world, the data suggest that more than 800 million people are using social media for work today.
Top social media platforms in 2019
Despite a troubling year in 2018, Facebook maintains its top platform ranking in early 2019, and – contrary to ongoing media hysteria – there’s little evidence to suggest that people are leaving the platform in any significant numbers.