An important milestone achieved by… the internet!

This time not a company or product that hits a milestone, but the entire internet has written a big number to its name.

According to most sources, 1983 is the official start of the internet. Just to show how explosively the internet has grown over the past forty years. Especially when social media was on the rise, things went fast. How hard? We know that thanks to a new report.

Report on the Internet

Thanks to a report on the internet from We Are Social and Hootsuite, we have a battery of figures about the internet. The ups, downs and funny know-how about how we will use the internet in 2022. The report is 298 pages and going through the whole thing is something you should do yourself in your spare time (via this link), so let’s take a look at the highlights.

Milestone internet

Perhaps the most notable figure is an important milestone for the Internet. Since April 2022, 5 billion people have used the internet. A significant figure: it is 63 percent of the world population (7.93 billion people), of which 5.32 billion have access to a smartphone. The latter is equally important for later. In any case, the vast majority of the world is now an internet user and almost as many people use social media.

availabilty

The fact that there are more people than ever on the internet these days has of course to do with how the internet is available and to what extent. Hopefully it is not surprising that we in Europe produce the highest numbers: 98 percent in Northern Europe has internet and 94 percent in Western Europe. Southern and Eastern Europe are also in good shape, but slightly less so. North America also takes nearly 100 percent. Low numbers can be found in Africa and South Asia, especially Central Africa adopts very little internet.

Most commonly used

Then to some states about the most used things on the internet since the milestone of 5 million. Like the most used social media. Facebook is right at the top of this, YouTube follows at an appropriate distance. WhatsApp scores relatively low, because the availability of WhatsApp is not great worldwide. Instagram, WeChat, Tiktok and many others follow the frontrunners at an appropriate distance.

Another funny incident is search terms on Google. More concretely: what you enter in the search box on Google. Many people still visit websites by first looking them up on Google, but many people apparently do not realize that they are already on Google. ‘Google’ is the most searched term on Google. Then YouTube and then ‘You’. We can’t speak for everyone, but the latter is familiar to people who want to search YouTube and hope that the rest will be supplemented from ‘You’. If not, You will be entered as the search term. Other popular search terms include commonly used websites such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Amazon, and Instagram, in addition to weather, news, and the like. New for 2022 and relevant in the first few months are, for example, ‘Ukraine’ and ‘Wordle’.

Anyone who knows exactly which website to look for has created the list below. All websites visited based on totals. YouTube, Google, and Facebook are logical candidates here, as are Twitter, Instagram, Amazon, and Reddit. Websites such as ‘De Hub’ and XVideos are also high, so do with that information what you want.

Smartphones

Gone are the days when the internet only belongs to a computer. Even though 68 percent of people are still browsing on a PC, it will be 91 percent (92 percent if you include non-smartphones) of people who will browse mobile in 2022. That too is a special milestone of the internet.

Then another funny statement as a result: how easy is it (financially speaking) to get hold of a smartphone? The Netherlands is in the top 10. The cheapest smartphone here is 68 dollars, converted about 60 euros. As far as we can find, that is the Alcatel 1 (2021), an Android smartphone that you can get for 59.99 euros. This smartphone costs 1.5 percent of the average power of a Dutch person. Bulgaria is slightly above us, because the cheapest smartphone there costs 12 dollars. At the very top are the UK and the Turks and Caicos Islands, where the cheapest smartphone ($26 and $19, respectively) costs just 0.7 percent of average income. The prices on the other hand are more striking, where, for example, Azerbaijan is in last place. There, the cheapest smartphone is $1,158, which is 333 percent of the average income. The country has strict rules on buying and registering a mobile phone.

As mentioned, there are many more statistics to be found throughout the report, so please read it if you have the time. The important milestone for the internet is explained in many figures throughout the report.