How fast has the world come online?

73.6% of the world's people used the internet in 2025, up from 15.6% in 2005, the first year the World Bank gives a world figure. It counts people who used the internet at least once in the previous three months. The world figures are estimates by the International Telecommunication Union.

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Key facts

Measure: People using the internet, % of world population. Written from the data below.

  • The latest figure, for 2025, is 73.6%.
  • That is up 58 percentage points from 15.6% in 2005.
  • It is the highest in the data, which go back to 2005.
  • The lowest was 15.6% in 2005.

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How to read this chart

Each point is the share of the world's people who used the internet at least once in the previous three months, as estimated by the International Telecommunication Union. The axis starts at zero, so the height shows the true share. The steeper the line, the faster people were coming online.

Questions to discuss

  1. About what share of the world was online in the first year on the chart, and in the latest year?
  2. Did the share grow faster in some years than others? What could have sped it up?
  3. Using the internet once in three months counts here. What does this number leave out about how people get online?

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Source and date

Source
World Bank, World Development Indicators: Individuals using the Internet (% of population)
License
CC BY 4.0 (credit the World Bank)
Data as of
Published

Citation

Chartly. “How fast has the world come online?” Chart. Data: World Bank, World Development Indicators: Individuals using the Internet (% of population), https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.NET.USER.ZS (data as of December 31, 2025). https://chart.ly/charts/world-internet-use (accessed November 4, 2026).

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The data

Download data (CSV)

The file has the numbers in this table, with the source, license and date. Please credit the source and Chartly. Developers can also get them as JSON (how).

Year People using the internet, % of world population
2005 15.6
2006 17.2
2007 20.2
2008 22.8
2009 25.3
2010 28.4
2011 30.9
2012 33.3
2013 35.3
2014 37.4
2015 39.9
2016 43.6
2017 46.3
2018 49.4
2019 53.9
2020 60.1
2021 63.8
2022 67
2023 69.2
2024 71.2
2025 73.6

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