Three in four people now online, up from under half in 2016

ITU data shows 76 percent of humanity used the internet in 2026, versus 44 percent ten years earlier, with low-income countries nearly tripling.

The International Telecommunication Union reports that 76 percent of the world's population used the internet in 2026. The figure for 2016 was 44 percent. Over ten years, the share of people online moved from under half of humanity to roughly three in four.

The change was steepest in proportional terms in the poorest countries. In low-income countries, internet users as a share of population rose from 11.5 percent to 32.3 percent over the same period, nearly tripling. That is a rise of about 21 percentage points, compared with a 32-point rise worldwide, so the poorest countries grew fastest in relative terms but still gained less in absolute share.

Why it matters for abundance: a connection is the delivery channel for much else that can become cheap or free. Information, learning material, banking, health guidance and remote work all reach a person once they are online, and the marginal cost of serving one more user is tiny. Every added point of access widens the pool of people who can use those goods at close to no cost. That touches both connection and knowledge directly.

What to watch next: whether low-income countries keep closing the gap, since fewer than one in three people there are still online, against three in four globally. The figures count people who used the internet, which says nothing about speed, quality, affordability or what people can actually do once connected. Those details decide how much of the potential benefit is real, and they are not covered by this headline measure.

Source: HumanProgress