How many people use the Internet?

Do children count in global internet user statistics?

A friend asked about a Statista article, and whether children were included in global estimates of individual internet usage. Internet usage was one indicator of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, of developing global partnerships — as countries develop and benefit from new technologies.

This article looks at how individual internet usage is estimated.

Behind the wall

A major problem with Statista is that users must pay in order to see basic information, such as the data source and which organisation published the figures. This is poor practice.

In some Statista articles, data is presented without important context. One example would be the BARB estimates of quarterly reach by the BBC News channel. This is shown by Statista without reference to the decline in viewers of Sky News — another major 24-hours news channel.

In the Statista article on global internet users, there is apparent contradiction, claiming:

Almost 4.48 billion people were active internet users as of October 2019, encompassing 58 percent of the global population.

Four sentences later:

The global online penetration rate is 57 percent, with North America and Northern Europe both ranking first with a 95 percent internet penetration rate among the population.