International Internet Facts

After reading the Noniashvili, Batiashvili and Griffin (2014) article on social media use in Georgia, I became curious about how Georgia ranks now in terms of internet and Facebook use.In the article, they claim that Georgia was ranked #82 in the world for the percentage of the population on the internet. They also claim that 83% of internet users in Georgia were Facebook members in 2014 (p. 4).

I searched around the internet for statistics on international internet use, and found on Wikipedia that Georgia had fallen to #100 in terms of internet use. Also, if the numbers in this site are correct, then the percentage of internet users on Facebook has fallen to 79%.

Some other interesting things I learned are:

India has the most Facebook users in the world, with 270 million users as of  July 2019. To put this in perspective, the US is second at 190 million users.

While Facebook is still the most popular social media platform in the US, very few teenagers are using it. Could this mean that Facebook will lose popularity over time?

A number of countries in Africa have shockingly low levels of internet penetration (percent of population using the internet), with Eritrea coming last at 1.31% of the population using the internet in 2017. This is troubling, and hopefully it is something that is being addressed. I plan to do a little more research in this area.

Also, I found this really cool map that will tell you about internet use around the world.

Did anyone else take a look around at internet statistics? Did you find anything interesting?


Reference:

Noniashvili, M., Batiashvili, M., & Griffin, G. (2014). The use of social media in the Republic of Georgia and a discussion about American academic freedom with electronic communications.Preview the document Journal of Eastern European and Central Asian Research, 1 (1), 1-8.