The State of Digital Development in 2022
7-Sep-2023
In 2022, about 66% of the world’s population, or 5.3 billion people, used the internet. This represented a growth rate of 6.1% over 2021, up from 5.1% for 2020-2021. However, this growth rate was still lower than the 11% seen at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. This meant that there were still 2.7 billion people who were offline at the end of 2022.
The internet penetration rate was highest in Europe, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), and the Americas, where between 80 and 90% of the population used the internet. In the Arab States and Asia-Pacific countries, the internet penetration rate was about two-thirds of the population. In Africa, the internet penetration rate was just 40%.
Universal connectivity was still a distant prospect in the least developed countries (LDCs) and landlocked developing countries (LLDCs), where only 36% of the population was currently online. These countries faced a number of challenges in connecting their citizens to the internet, such as high costs, lack of infrastructure, and low literacy rates.
In 2022, 69% of men and 63% of women used the internet. This means that there were 259 million more men than women using the internet. Gender parity is achieved when the gender parity score, defined as the female percentage divided by the male percentage, stands between 0.98 and 1.02. The world has been taking small steps towards gender parity in the last three years, moving from 0.90 in 2019 to 0.92 in 2022. However, the gender gap actually increased by 20 million when measured by the absolute difference between the numbers of men and women online. Women are also disproportionately represented in the offline population. In 2022, women outnumbered male non-users by 18%, up from 11% in 2019.
The regions with the highest internet use also have the highest gender parity scores. In the Americas, the CIS and Europe, gender parity has been achieved. Both the Asia-Pacific and the Arab States have improved their gender parity score, whereas Africa has stalled in the last three years. LDCs and LLDCs show the same trends as Africa: low internet use and a low gender parity score, with hardly any progress towards gender parity over the last three years.
The Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are an exception to the correlation between low internet use and a low gender parity score. While universal connectivity remains elusive, these islands have reached full gender parity.
In 2022, 75% of people aged between 15 and 24 used the internet, which is 10 percentage points more than the rest of the population (65%). There are signs that the generational gap in internet use is shrinking. In 2020, the difference between the penetration rate among young people (71%) and the rest of the population (57%) was 14 percentage points. In all regions of the world, people aged between 15 and 24 were more connected than people who were older or younger than that.
The biggest gap was observed in low-income economies, where 39% of young people used the internet, compared with only 23% for the rest of the population.
In 2022, 82% of urban dwellers used the internet, while only 45% of rural dwellers did. This means that the percentage of internet users in urban areas was 1.8 times as high as the percentage of internet users in rural areas. The urban-rural gap in internet use has been narrowing over the past three years. In 2019, the ratio of internet users in urban and rural areas was 2.3.
The urban-rural gap in internet use is widest in Africa, where 64% of urban dwellers used the internet in 2022 compared with only 23% of people in rural areas. However, this is a significant improvement from 2019, when the ratio was nearly 4. The urban-rural gap in internet use is also narrowing in the Asia-Pacific region. In 2022, the ratio of internet users in urban and rural areas was 1.8, down from 2.4 three years ago. The narrowing of the urban-rural gap in internet use is due to a number of factors, including the increasing availability of affordable internet access in rural areas, the expansion of mobile broadband networks, and government initiatives to bridge the digital divide.
In 2022, globally, 73% of the population aged 10 and over owned a mobile phone, which is seven percentage points higher than the percentage of individuals who used the internet. The gap between mobile phone ownership and internet use was closing in all regions, as growth in internet use had significantly outpaced the growth of mobile phone ownership over the last three years. In the Americas, CIS and Europe, where internet penetration exceeded 80% on average, the rate of mobile phone ownership was only marginally higher than internet use. Elsewhere, the gap was much wider. In low-income economies, mobile phone ownership was almost twice as prevalent as internet use.
The gender parity gap in mobile phone ownership was comparable with that in internet use. At the global level, the gender parity score for mobile phone ownership was marginally lower (i.e. skewed against women) than it was for internet use. As with internet use, progress has been uneven in the past three years. Women were about 12% less likely to own mobile phones than men – virtually unchanged from 2019. Among those not owning mobile phones, women outnumbered men by 39% in 2022.
Source: International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
Leave a Comment
