Digital 2023 Deep-Dive: The journey towards universal internet connectivity
Despite meaningful updates to worldwide internet user numbers over recent months, the latest data reveal that 2.85 billion people around the world are still not using the internet at the start of 2023.
Moreover, Kepios analysis reveals that roughly 96 percent of these “unconnected” populations live in lower- and middle-income countries (LMICs).
And this imbalance remains even if we focus on mobile internet use, too.
For example, GSMA Intelligence’s “State of Mobile Internet Connectivity 2022” report states that 94 percent of those people who don’t currently use mobile internet live in LMICs.
Furthermore, the report highlights that adults in rural areas of LMICs are 33 percent less likely to use mobile internet than their peers in urban areas.
That finding is an improvement on 2020 data from the ITU, which indicated that – at a global level – people in urban areas were more than twice as likely to use the internet compared with people living in rural areas.
However, it’s clear that connecting rural populations remains a priority, especially across Sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian subcontinent.
At a country level, India is home to the greatest number of the world’s unconnected, with 730 million people in the country still not using the internet at the start of 2023.
Meanwhile, despite showing an internet adoption rate of more than 70 percent, China is home to the world’s second-largest “unconnected” population, with almost 375 million people across the country not yet online.
But for added context, India will soon be the world’s largest country by population.
There’s some debate about whether this has already happened, but data from the United Nations World Population Prospects indicate that the change at the top of the rankings will certainly occur before the middle of this year.
More than half a billion people still unaware of the internet
Despite meaningful gains in connectivity and mobile internet use across LMICs in recent months, one of the most startling findings in GSMA Intelligence’s research is that large numbers of people remain unaware of the existence of mobile internet.
Overall, more than 80 percent of adults living in LMICs are now aware of the fact that they can access the internet via a mobile phone.
However, roughly 4 in 10 adults aged 18 and above living in India are still unaware that they can access the internet on these devices.
That equates to almost 400 million individuals in India alone, and suggests that more than half of the country’s unconnected are still unaware of mobile internet.
The figures for Bangladesh are slightly more encouraging, but roughly 30 percent of the country’s adult population remains unaware of mobile internet, meaning that the country is home to a further 35 million people who still do not know that they can use the internet on mobile phones.
Barriers to internet adoption
For those who are aware of mobile internet but who remain offline, GSMA Intelligence highlights three primary barriers:
Literacy and digital skills
Affordability
Safety and security
In particular, the ability to read and write remains a key barrier to adoption and use of the internet across many LMICs, where adult literacy rates remain stubbornly low, especially amongst women.
For example, data from the World Bank reveals that less than half of all women over the age of 15 across Western Africa can be considered “literate” today.
Meanwhile, more than 1 in 3 adult women across Africa and Southern Asia are unable to read and write.
As we saw above, these regions are also home to the greatest share of the world’s “unconnected” populations, and this data indicates that improving internet adoption rates in these regions won’t simply be a case of activating more mobile data connections.
Technological developments such as voice assistants and an increasing move to audio-visual content like video may help to mitigate some of these issues, but research from GSMA Intelligence finds that many of those people affected by lower literacy are also unaware of these potential facilitators.
At a worldwide level, we’ve also seen a decline in the use of voice assistants to find information over the past few months, suggesting that these tools may still struggle to deliver the outcomes that users are hoping for.
Meanwhile, the cost of mobile handsets and data remains an important barrier to internet adoption across many parts of the world, despite important progress in these areas since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
For example, GSMA Intelligence reports that 1GB of mobile data now costs less than 2 percent of the average monthly income in most LMICs.
However, recent analysis from cable.co.uk suggests that mobile data remains prohibitively expensive in a number of countries around the world, most notably across Sub-Saharan Africa.
But there’s often a big difference between the median price of data and the lowest-priced data plan in each country.
As a result, policy makers and NGOs may wish to dig deeper into these differences to understand whether there are easy ways to help more people in LMICs access cheaper data.
But the price of data isn’t the only economic challenge, and handset costs put even entry-level smartphones beyond the reach of many people across LMICs.
Ironically – and somewhat frustratingly – the Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) reports that smartphone handsets can be considerably cheaper in the world’s richest countries than they are in some of the world’s poorest, even if we look at absolute dollar prices.
But once we factor average monthly incomes, these differences become even more stark.
For example, the price of the cheapest smartphone handset equates to more than a full month’s average salary in five countries around the world, but less than 1 percent of the typical monthly wage in the United Kingdom.
Furthermore, high levels of inflation and the “cost-of-living crisis” will likely mean that internet-enabled handsets become even less affordable for people living in LMICs in 2023, further complicating our journey towards universal connectivity.
The digital gender gap
But one of the most important barriers to universal connectivity is entirely man-made – and by “man” made, I’m specifically referring to the male gender.
The ITU’s latest numbers indicate that more than 6 in 10 women around the world now use the internet, but – relatively speaking – men are still almost 10 percent more likely to use the internet compared with women.
However, the digital gender gap is significantly more pronounced across Africa and the Indian subcontinent, and this gender disparity plays an important role in depressing internet adoption rates in these regions.
As we saw above, differences in literacy levels likely play a role here, but those differences in education outcomes are likely a symptom of the same underlying issues, rather than being the root cause in themselves.
Gender data for internet use is not available for every country in the world, but social media user data can offer a useful proxy for reference.
Just before we get into the numbers, it’s worth stressing that social media user data is far from perfect when it comes to exploring issues beyond simple social media use.
For example, “user” numbers don’t necessarily represent unique human individuals, and duplicate and false accounts may inflate user figures amongst demographics that are more “commercially valuable” (i.e. appealing to advertisers).
Similarly, some social media platforms “infer” users’ gender based on analysis of their activity on the platform, but our analysis suggests that the algorithms used for these inferences are often largely inaccurate outside of Western countries.
And lastly, users’ own misrepresentations of the facts may also distort the data.
Our analysis suggests that people below the legal age of majority (e.g. below the age of 18 or 21) frequently misrepresent their age, entering a false data of birth when registering for social platforms in order to access age-restricted content.
Meanwhile, women and people of non-binary gender may actively choose to misrepresent the gender they’d normally identify as, in order to avoid the risk of online harassment and abuse.
Despite these challenges however, the data still offers valuable insights.
For example, across Southern India – home to the largest number of the world’s “unconnected” – roughly three-quarters of all social media users are male.
However, when we look at countries where women face fewer restrictions on their behaviour – such as across Western Europe and Northern America – we see that women are in fact more likely to use social media compared with male peers.
Furthermore, data from various sources indicates that – on average, and in the absence of impedance – more than 9 in 10 working-age internet users actively choose to use social media each month, and that ratio tends to be even higher amongst women.
So, based on all of the above, we can hypothesise that lower levels of social media use specifically amongst women are likely the result of misogyny.
Note: you can find this social media gender data for almost every country in the world in our local country reports.
Not just a digital issue
So, much as we’ve seen meaningful progress in connecting some of the world’s unconnected over recent months, it’s clear that more needs to be done if we’re to meet the UN’s stated goal of universal connectivity by 2030.
And the critical point to remember here is that the benefits of improving connectivity extend to impact almost every aspect of everyday life.
Indeed, as the authors of GSMA Intelligence’s State of Mobile Internet Connectivity report stress,
“Mobile internet connectivity can deliver significant economic benefits, reduce poverty, and transform people’s lives, providing them with access to information and services that not only assist them in their daily lives, but that they would not have had access to otherwise.”
So, while some in the West may romanticise the notion of going “off-grid” for a while, it’s worth highlighting that such a choice remains a luxury for those that are privileged enough to be able to use the internet whenever they choose.
Dig deeper: if you’d like to explore all of these issues in more detail, and access more complete datasets, we recommend the following:
GSMA Intelligence’s “State of Mobile Internet Connectivity 2023” report is essential reading for anyone hoping to understand trends in internet adoption and use across LMICs.
Explore our Digital 2023 Global Overview Report for broader context on the latest trends in internet adoption and online behaviours around the world.
Our complete collection of Digital 2023 reports has comprehensive data on digital and adoption and use for almost every country in the world.
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