How many people use the internet?

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Cifra · Accepted Answer

5,500,000,000 people. The ITU estimates about 5.5 billion internet users, roughly two-thirds of humanity. That leaves around 2.6 billion people offline, concentrated in low-income countries and rural areas. Most new users in the last decade came online through a phone and have never used a desktop computer. Take a share of the world. Roughly two thirds of humanity is online, and world population is around eight billion. Two thirds of eight billion gives the answer, and this is another figure that is easier to hold as a share than as an absolute because the share moves slowly and predictably. The complement is the more important number: around 2.6 billion people offline, concentrated in low-income countries and rural areas. Discussions of "the internet" routinely assume universal access when a third of humanity is not connected, and that missing third is not randomly distributed but systematically the poorest. The last point in the explanation reframes what being online means. Most new users in the last decade came online through a phone and have never used a desktop computer, so the assumptions built into desktop-era web design — large screens, fast connections, unmetered data — do not describe the majority of users. This site is built accordingly.

Source	International Telecommunication Union
Figure refers to	2024
Last checked	September 1, 2026
Unit	people

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