Facebook says only 4 in 10 people use the internet

According to a recent study published by Facebook-owned Internet.org, only roughly %40 of people around the world have accessed the internet at least once a year. That’s a surprising number to many people, although many studies performed on the same topic result with similar conclusions. It’s surprising that such a large library of knowledge is accessed by less than half of the world. The actual percentage the Internet.org study found to have accessed the internet at least once a year is 37.9 %.

The study from Facebook focuses on revealing the state of connectivity to the internet around the world and reveals percentages for people who have access to internet, who live near a mobile internet connection and who can afford the internet. Various studies say that the adoption of the internet as a service will grow significantly in the next few years as access to the service will be made cheaper and easier, but it won’t grow as much as we had thought a few years ago. Essentially, it seems that internet adoption has slowed down in the past year.

The Facebook study reveals that people in North America are the most connected, as 84.4 % of people use the internet at least once a year. Next up come developed countries in general, at 76.2 %, suggesting that emerging markets and developing countries can’t provide an easy and cheap means to access the internet as of yet. Another surprising fact revealed by the Facebook study is that about 80 % of the population all around the world can actually afford internet at 100 MB/ Mo plans. One of the main problems identified in the study when it comes to people accessing the internet is content in their own language, after which comes infrastructure and affordability. Only 53 % of people have sufficient relevant content online, which means that the rest might not be interested in the internet. Marc Zuckerberg will address the study and the issues it raises at the MWC 2015 on March 2 in a session with mobile operators.