Data

Number of people using the Internet

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About this data

Number of people using the Internet
The number of individuals using the Internet.
Source
HYDE (2023); Gapminder (2022); UN WPP (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
December 23, 2024
Next expected update
December 2025
Date range
1960–2021
Unit
users

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

The World Development Indicators (WDI) is the primary World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially-recognized international sources. It presents the most current and accurate global development data available, and includes national, regional and global estimates.

Retrieved on
May 20, 2024
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
World Bank's World Development Indicators (WDI).

Our World in Data builds and maintains a long-run dataset on population by country, region, and for the world, based on various sources.

You can find more information on these sources and how our time series is constructed on this page: https://ourworldindata.org/population-sources

Retrieved on
July 11, 2024
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
The long-run data on population is based on various sources, described on this page: https://ourworldindata.org/population-sources

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline
Notes on our processing step for this indicator

The number of internet users is calculated by Our World in Data based on internet access figures as a share of the total population, published in the World Development Indicators by the World Bank and total population figures from the UN World Population Prospects, Gapminder and HYDE."

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Number of people using the Internet”, part of the following publication: Hannah Ritchie, Lucas Rodés-Guirao, Edouard Mathieu, Marcel Gerber, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, Joe Hasell and Max Roser (2023) - “Population Growth”. Data adapted from International Telecommunication Union (via World Bank), Various sources. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-internet-users [online resource]
How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

HYDE (2023); Gapminder (2022); UN WPP (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

HYDE (2023); Gapminder (2022); UN WPP (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Number of people using the Internet” [dataset]. International Telecommunication Union (via World Bank), “World Development Indicators”; Various sources, “Population” [original data]. Retrieved December 26, 2024 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-internet-users