3 Billion and Counting

the Internet 2003                                                                 The Opte Project

According to this website, less than 1 percent of the world had an Internet connection 20 years ago. Today, approximately 40 percent does. That's about 3 billion individuals. Not surprisingly, because of its large population, China leads the United States in number of Internet users, but we are ahead in percent of the population using the resource. Figures from 2014 show that 86.75 percent of us are using the Internet, which, interestingly, puts us behind countries like South Korea (91.52), Canada (92.89), the UK (89.90), Australia (89.62), The Netherlands (96.08), the UAE (93.24), and Germany (86.78) in that category. Nor should it come as a surprise that the countries with the highest percent of Internet users tend to be in Scandinavia and north Africa, while those with the lowest tend to be in sub-Saharan Africa, like Malawi (2.23), Niger (1.61), and Ethiopia (1.70): http://www.internetlivestats.com/internet-users/