Internet Usage Statistics 2026

In absolute numbers, this corresponds to 6 billion people, up from 5.8 billion in 2024.

Today, in 2025, 74 per cent of the world’s population are online, compared with 71 per cent a year earlier.

The remaining quarter of people – 2.2 billion individuals – remain offline, most of them in low- and middle-income countries.

Kepios analysis indicates that the total number of people using the internet reached 6.04 billion by the start of October 2025, resulting in a global internet penetration figure of 73.2 percent .

Kepios ’s latest analysis indicates that a total of 2.21 billion people do not yet use the internet in October 2025, with the majority of the world’s offline population living in Southern Asia and Central Africa.

By the end of 2025, the number of people using mobile internet increased to 4.8 billion people (59% of the global population).

As per the information received from 1596 operators for the month of September 2026, the total number of broadband subscribers increased from 1101.21 million at the end of August 2026 to 1107.68 million at the end of September 2026 with a monthly growth rate of 0.59%.

In contrast, only 23 per cent of the population of low-income countries are using the Internet.

By contrast, the average figure for Internet use for Africa is just 36 per cent.

Globally, 85 per cent of urban dwellers use the Internet in 2025, compared to just over half of the rural population (58 per cent).

Globally, 77 per cent of men use the Internet, compared with 71 per cent of women.

Globally, 82 per cent of people aged 15 to 24 use the Internet, ten percentage points more than among the rest of the population (72 per cent).

Kepios analysis indicates that just 54.5 percent of the world’s rural populations are online today, which is markedly lower than the 86.5 percent internet adoption figure that we see amongst urban populations.

Despite the benefits of connectivity, 38% of the global population are living within mobile broadband coverage but are not using it – the usage gap.

Source: ITU From the early stages of commercialisation in 2019, 5G coverage has expanded to cover 55 per cent of the world's population in 2025.

However, 5G currently reaches 84 per cent of people in high-income countries, but only 4 per cent of people in low-income countries, indicating that growth has been uneven.

In low- and middle-income countries, Internet services remain unaffordable in about 60 per cent of economies, preventing many from coming online or limiting their ability to fully participate in – and benefit from – the digital economy.

Globally the median price of the data-only mobile broadband basket, expressed as a share of gross national income (GNI) per capita, fell from 1.5 to 1.4 per cent, while the fixed broadband basket remained stable at 2.5 per cent of GNI per capita.

Today, 97% of U.S. adults say they use the internet.

And that growth continues today: 78% of U.S. adults now say they subscribe to a broadband internet service at home.

Today, 16% of U.S. adults are “smartphone-only” internet users, meaning they own a smartphone but do not subscribe to a home broadband service.

Nearly all U.S. teens (97%) say they use the internet daily, including four-in-ten who say they are almost constantly online.

By race and ethnicity Black (55%) and Hispanic teens (52%) are about twice as likely as White teens (27%) to say they’re online almost constantly.

While the cable industry lost nearly 1.5 million wired broadband subscribers last year, fixed wireless gained over 3.9 million—more than double the number of subscribers cable lost.

81% of Americans age 12+ (233 million) listened to online audio in the last month, and 76% (219 million) listened in the last week

In the EU, 94% of the individuals used the internet in the last 3 months in 2025 while 4% spent the whole year without using the internet.

In 2025, the highest rates of household connection to the internet were reported by the Netherlands and Luxembourg with 99% (Figure 1).

In 2025, the lowest rates of household internet access among the EU countries were reported by Greece and Croatia (with 89% and 88% respectively).

74% of the individuals ordered or bought services or goods online in the EU in 2025.

At EU level, in 2025, 82% of individuals aged between 16 and 74 years old reported having sent or received e-mails, matching the rate of those who used instant messaging.

In 2025, 72% of individuals aged between 16 and 74 years old used internet to find information about goods and services in the EU.

In the EU, in 2025, a share of 52% persons used their eID to access online services.

In 2025, 26% of the individuals reported having encountered difficulties when using the internet in the EU.

57% of Americans age 12+ have ever used a generative AI assistant

Somewhat frustratingly, it’s still challenging to put an exact figure on global AI use, but Kepios ’s analysis indicates that more than 1 billion people now use LLMs and GenAI platforms each month.

And to put these figures into broader perspective, our analysis of the latest GWI data indicates that the typical online adult now spends roughly 33½ hours per week consuming all types of online media (including streaming TV), which suggests that social and video feeds now account for more than half of our connected activities.

In the EU in 2025, nearly 1 in 3 individuals used generative AI tools overall, most often for private reasons (25%), for professional purposes (15%), or even for formal education (9%).

Online video marches on For the first time, a majority of people now watch online news video in all 48 Digital News Report markets: 77% of people globally consume online news video each week.

Weekly use of AI chatbots such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google Gemini for news increased year-on-year from 7% to 10%.

In 2025, nearly 9 in 10 Canadians (88%) reported that they used a combination of both virtual and in-person communications to socialize with friends during the month preceding the SSC-WC (Table 1).

Similarly, Canadians with virtual-only communication with friends also had a greater likelihood of reporting that they always or often felt lonely (24%) compared to those who met friends in-person and virtually (15%).

It was at that time that growth accelerated, climbing steadily through September, October, and November, peaking at 19% growth for the year.

Almost half of the 174 major Internet outages observed around the world in 2025 were due to government-directed regional and national shutdowns of Internet connectivity

Throughout 2025, we found that traffic from AI bots accounted for an average of 4.2% of HTML requests.

Globally, traffic from Starlink continued to see consistent growth throughout 2025, with total request volume up 2.3x across the year.

After seeing significant growth in 2024 , the global share of post-quantum encrypted traffic nearly doubled throughout 2025, from 29% at the start of the year to 52% in early December.

In 2025, Access Now and the #KeepItOn coalition documented 313 shutdowns in 52 countries , surpassing the appalling records from 2024 ( 304 ) and 2023 ( 289 ).

Conflict was the leading trigger for internet shutdowns for a third year running, with 125 conflict-related shutdowns documented across 14 countries as perpetrators regularly cut off internet access to conceal war crimes and atrocities and terrorize populations.

Mobile network data traffic continues to grow, rising 23 percent between Q2 2025 and Q2 2026.

Globally, 5G subscriptions is now close to 3.3 billion, and half of the world’s mobile data traffic is carried over 5G.