Digital in 2017: Global overview

Today marks a momentous milestone for all things digital, with the new Digital in 2017 Global Overview report from We Are Social and Hootsuite revealing that more than half of the world’s population now uses the internet. Our findings have exciting implications for businesses, governments, and society in general, but they’re also testament to the speed with which digital connectivity is changing the lives of people all over the world. It’s only been 25 years since Tim Berners-Lee made the ‘World Wide Web’ available to the public, but in that time, the internet has already become an integral part of everyday life for most of the world’s population. It’s not just the internet that’s growing rapidly, either; we’ve identified a wealth of other important milestones as part of this year’s Global Digital report, including: More than half the world now uses a smartphone; Almost two-thirds of the world’s population now has a mobile phone; More than half of the world’s web traffic now comes from mobile phones; More than half of all mobile connections around the world are now ‘broadband’; More than one in five of the world’s population shopped online in the past 30 days