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The Rate at Which the World is Getting Online Has Fallen Sharply Since 2015, New Report Suggests (theguardian.com)
Ian Sample, writing for The Guardian: The growth of internet access around the world has slowed dramatically, according to new data, suggesting the digital revolution will remain a distant dream for billions of the poorest and most isolated people on the planet. The striking trend, described in an unpublished report shared with the Guardian, shows the rate at which the world is getting online has fallen sharply since 2015, with women and the rural poor substantially excluded from education, business and other opportunities the internet can provide.
The slowdown is described in an analysis of UN data that will be published next month by the Web Foundation, an organisation set up by the inventor of the world wide web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee. The data shows that growth in global internet access dropped from 19% in 2007 to less than 6% last year. "We underestimated the slowdown and the growth rate is now really worrying," said Dhanaraj Thakur, research director at the Web Foundation. "The problem with having some people online and others not is that you increase the existing inequalities. If you're not part of it, you tend to lose out."
The slowdown is described in an analysis of UN data that will be published next month by the Web Foundation, an organisation set up by the inventor of the world wide web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee. The data shows that growth in global internet access dropped from 19% in 2007 to less than 6% last year. "We underestimated the slowdown and the growth rate is now really worrying," said Dhanaraj Thakur, research director at the Web Foundation. "The problem with having some people online and others not is that you increase the existing inequalities. If you're not part of it, you tend to lose out."
It's not even as bad as that. The rate that was shown in the article was about the rate of growth of the number of people with internet access. I tried working backwards with the figures they gave (44.9% of women, 50.9% of men, for an average of 47.9%) and estimating the percentage of the world's population that had internet access in each of the years the graph in the article showed a growth rate for. The resulting numbers give an almost linear increase of 3% per annum, so the numbers getting online each year isn't diminishing, it's just that each year there are more already online compared to newcomers. If that trend continues the entire world will be online around 2035.