Digital 2025: the world is ever more connected
Unlike the wave of big headlines that we saw during 2024, there are no standout “milestone figures” in our Digital 2025 Global Overview Report.
However, don’t let the absence of “big round numbers” fool you.
Indeed, all the evidence points to continued strong growth in digital adoption and use over recent months, and the numbers that we do have tell equally compelling stories.
For initial context – as we reported in our April 2024 update – internet users now qualify for “supermajority” status, meaning that there are more than twice as many people using the internet today as there are people who remain offline.
And perhaps more tellingly, the internet now reaches even more people than conventional TV.
For perspective, data from Statista indicates that 5.32 billion people watch “linear” TV formats like broadcast and cable channels today, but that figure is almost a quarter of a billion lower than our latest internet user total of 5.56 billion.
It’s worth noting that mobile still reaches more people than the internet though, and the latest data suggest that roughly 220 million of the world’s 5.78 billion mobile users do not currently use the internet.
Crucially though, the latest data shows that people all over the world are turning to connected devices and services for a wider variety of activities and needs today than they did this time a year ago, and these evolving behaviours are perhaps more representative of digital trends than user numbers alone.
Greater digital expectations
This time two years ago – in our Digital 2023 Global Overview Report – we were exploring a rather unexpected trend: the average number of motivations for using the internet had fallen to the lowest figure we’d seen in GWI’s regular survey.
Fast-forward to the start of 2025 though, and that downward trend has very much reversed.
In fact, GWI’s latest research shows that the average number of reasons for using the internet has rebounded to levels that we last saw during the era of Covid-19 lockdowns.
“Finding information” remains the single greatest motivation for going online at the start of 2025, with 62.8 percent of adult internet users stating that this is one of their main reasons for using the internet today.
However, it’s also interesting to note that more than 6 in 10 internet users now say that “staying in touch with friends and family” is a top digital motivation.
And perhaps more tellingly, social interactions are now the primary reason for going online amongst internet users aged 16 to 34, whereas this motivation only ranks third amongst internet users aged 55 and above.
These differences may be as much determined by lifestage as they are by variations in digital outlook, but either way, the fact that younger people cite social connection as their top digital need has important implications for the future of digital devices and services.
Social connection doesn’t just mean social media though, and – as we explore in our complete Digital 2025 Global Overview Report – young people rely on a variety of digital platforms and services to communicate with the people and organisations that they care about.
Age also plays an important role in determining whether people are more likely to look for entertainment or news online, with younger people placing greater importance on videos and music, while older generations appear to place more emphasis on current affairs.
“Researching how to do things” and “finding new ideas or inspiration” remain other important reasons for going online though, and this finding has particularly important implications for anyone involved in the creation of content for digital environments.
Online time edges up
In a trend that may well be related to the increase in average online motivations, the amount of time that the world spends online has also been increasing over recent months, albeit only gradually.
GWI’s latest research finds that adult internet users now spend an average of 6 hours and 38 minutes online each day.
That’s actually 2 minutes less than the figure we reported this time last year, but it’s higher than any of the averages we’ve seen in the interim, and it’s also higher than the 6 hours and 36 minutes that we reported at the start of 2023 using GWI’s figures for Q3 2022.
The latest figure is also the same as the value we saw in late 2019 – just before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic – although it’s interesting to note that average online time was meaningfully higher in the equivalent periods of 2017 and 2018.
But it’s worth remembering that people only have a certain number of hours in each day, and – given that people already spend the equivalent of roughly 40 percent of their waking lives actively engaging with digital devices and services – we might expect to see these figures remain relatively stable for the foreseeable future.
It’s also important to note that GWI incorporated audiences over the age of 65 into its survey starting in Q1 2024, and – with older people tending to spend less time online compared with younger generations – this change brought the overall average in GWI’s figures down compared with the averages for prior periods.
And in fact, if we look at the average time spent online by age group, we see that people under the age of 45 are indeed spending more time online today than they were this time last year.
People aged 45 to 54 are the odd ones out here, with this age group actually spending less time online today than they did 12 months ago.
However, internet users aged 55 to 64 have also increased their online activity over the past year, even if their overall digital activity remains considerably lower than that of younger generations.
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This article is a sub-section of our Digital 2025 Global Overview Report.
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