by Mark Ollig
Copyright © 2016 Mark Ollig
Statistics, according to the Merriam Webster dictionary, is defined as “a collection of quantitative data.”
As my faithful readers know, when placing trust in the information found on a website, I always consider the source.
I believe the statistical data provided in real-time by Internet Live Stats (ILS) is trustworthy.
If the inventor of the World Wide Web; Tim Berners-Lee, feels he can trust quoting information from ILS, that’s good enough for me.
An Internet user is defined by ILS as an individual using any type of computing device and connection to access the Internet from their home.
As of July 1, the total number of Internet users on Earth was 3,424,971,237.
The world’s population at this time was estimated to be 7,432,663,275.
Which means just over 46 percent of the human inhabitants of this planet are using the Internet.
To discover not even half the planet’s population uses the Internet, may be of a surprise to some of us.
We also need to take into account the six “off-Earth” Internet users, who are currently living 260 miles above us in the International Space Station.
When it comes to countries with the highest number of Internet users, China is number one with 721,434,547.
India ranks second with 462,124,989, and the US is third with 286,942,362.
However, the US has the highest percentage of its population using the Internet among these three with 88.5 percent. China’s is 52.2 percent, and India has 34.8 percent.
ILS obtains some of its data from: International Telecommunication Union, World Bank, United Nations Population Division, and Internet & Mobile Association of India.
Would you be surprised if I told you there is one country on Earth with all of its population using the Internet?
In 2015, 2,975 Icelanders were not Internet users.
Today, all of Iceland’s 331,778 inhabitants are using the Internet, thus 100 percent of the country’s population are Internet users.
Being curious, I did some research and learned Iceland first electronically communicated outside of their country in 1906.
Iceland State Telephone Service started the same year; making physical connections to the undersea telegraph/telephone cables brought ashore to Iceland’s capital city; Reykjavik, from Scotland via the Faeroe Islands.
September 16, 2014, a message posted on Twitter by Tim Berners-Lee quoted ILS announcing the one billionth website had been added to the Internet.
As of Sept. 29, there were 1,086,150,000 websites – and this number continues to grow by the second.
To watch each new website (represented as a round, greenish, Internet World Wide Web icon) as it’s individually numbered and added to the total, go to http://www.internetlivestats.com/watch/websites.
While performing a query, ILS calculated the following events took place within one second over the Internet:
• YouTube videos viewed: 131,989.
• Google searches completed: 56,440.
• Skype video/voice calls: 2,287.
• Instagram photos uploaded: 743.
• Tumblr posts: 1,162.
• Emails sent: 2,526,586.
• Twitter tweets/messages: 7,356.
• Internet traffic passed: 38,304GB.
“Historical Estimates of World Population” can be found on the US Census Bureau website.
Its data shows in 1960, the world’s population was 3 billion.
By 2000, the planets inhabitants had doubled to 6 billion.
If this trend continues, the Earth will be supporting nine billion people by 2042.
I imagine the folks living in 2042 will have had Internet accessibility from anywhere on the planet for many years.
US Census Bureau’s historical world population numbers and related data can be seen at: http://tinyurl.com/bits-world.
The website for Internet Live Stats is http://www.internetlivestats.com.
