Share of the population using the Internet: source and method

Citation

World Telecommunication/ICT Indicators Database - International Telecommunication Union (ITU), via World Bank (2026) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Share of the population using the Internet – International Telecommunication Union” [dataset]. World Telecommunication/ICT Indicators Database - International Telecommunication Union (ITU), via World Bank, “World Development Indicators 129” [original data].

What it measures

Share of the population who used the Internet in the last three months. Unit: % of population.

How the data were processed

For Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, South America, and Oceania, we calculated the share ourselves, using our definition of the continents. For each continent and year, we took the average of the shares of the countries with data, weighted by each country's population. This assumes that countries without data have the same share as the rest of their continent.

We only kept a year for a continent if the countries with data make up at least 90% of its population. This removes 2025 for every continent, some or all of the years 1991–1995 depending on the continent, and 2002–2004 for Oceania, when there is no data for Australia.

All population figures come from the World Development Indicators. Countries that the World Development Indicators do not cover, such as Taiwan, are not included in the continents.

Figures for the world and for the World Bank's regions and income groups come from the World Bank.

Where it was taken from

Our World in Data publishes its data under the Creative Commons BY 4.0 licence; data produced by third parties keep their own licence, given in the full metadata. How this site takes its figures · All share of the population using the internet figures.