Digital 2022: Digital Adoption Doubled Over the Past Decade
2022 year marks the tenth anniversary of the first global report in our Global Digital Reports series, so we can now look back over a full decade of digital data.
In this article, we’ll cover the growth in internet users, social media users, and mobile users over the past 10 years, and also look ahead to what we might expect to see in future growth trends.
Context
If you’d like to indulge in a bit of nostalgia, you can find our first Global Overview Report here, and you can also find my more in-depth analysis of trends from the past decade in this article.
All subsequent reports in the series are also available in our free library.
Note that considerably more data is available today than it was at the time we produced that first report though, so some of the figures I’ll cover below may not match those that we published in previous reports.
Internet user growth
Based on the latest available data, our analysis shows that internet users have increased by a factor of 2.27 over the past decade, up from the 2.18 billion we reported in January 2021, to the 4.95 billion we’re reporting today.
That results in a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.6 percent for the past decade as a whole, but – as you can see in the chart below – annual growth rates have fluctuated quite a bit from year to year.
Global Internet Users Over Time January 2022 DataReportal
Based on the available data, it may look like internet user growth rates have slowed over the past year, but we strongly suspect that these lower numbers are more likely the result of challenges in collecting and reporting data over the past two years as a result of COVID-19.
As a result, there’s a very good chance we’ll report higher numbers for growth between 2021 and 2022 once newer data becomes available.
Social media user growth
Meanwhile, social media users have seen even stronger growth over the past decade, with our analysis revealing that the global total has jumped by a factor of 3.1 since 2012.
Comparing today’s 4.62 billion social media user figure with the 1.48 billion figure that we published in 2012 gives a CAGR of 12 percent, but – once again – individual figures for annual growth have fluctuated meaningfully from year to year.
Compared with internet user research, there are fewer challenges associated with collecting and reporting social media user numbers, so it’s interesting to see the big jumps in social media user numbers over the past two years – especially given the lower growth rates in internet users over the same period.
In light of the extent to which the world has come to depend on connected tech since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s perhaps not surprising to see the big jump in annual growth between 2020 and 2021.
However, I confess I’m surprised that the growth rate between 2021 and 2022 has remained above pre-pandemic levels.
Indeed, the fact that we’re still seeing double-digit growth in social media users this year is one of this year’s top headlines.
For context, many of those people who had perhaps been hesitant to join social media before the pandemic struck were more likely to have been swayed during the early days of lockdown, so I’m not convinced that we’re still seeing a significant “COVID impact” in these latest growth numbers.
Moreover, with social media users now equating to 58.4 percent of the world’s total population, we should – at least in theory – have started to see relative growth rates decelerate.
For clarity, in order to reduce the potential for duplication, we calculate most of our social media user figures using the active user numbers of the top social media platform in each country, so the rapid adoption of newer platforms like TikTok shouldn’t actually have much of an impact on these overall figures.
But how long might we expect to see social media user numbers grow at these current rates?
Well, the latest quarter-on-quarter growth rate does show some signs of deceleration compared with rates we’ve seen over the previous few quarters.
However, this may be in part due to when certain numbers become available – especially user numbers in China.
Mobile user growth
Trends in mobile user growth may offer valuable insights into the potential future growth trends we’ll see across internet users and social media users.
For context, more than two-thirds of the world’s total population (67.1 percent) now uses a mobile phone.
However, if we assume that the majority of the world’s mobile users will be at least 13 years old – at least outside of the world’s richest countries – it’s perhaps more realistic to take a figure closer to 85 percent as a more representative indicator of mobile adoption.
Moreover, mobile penetration has remained relatively static over the past few years.
As you can see in the chart below, absolute user numbers have continued to grow, but a significant share of that growth can be attributed to underlying population growth.
Future growth
With adoption rates for the internet and social media already approaching similar levels to those we see for mobile, I suspect we’ll see a more meaningful deceleration in digital growth over the coming years.
Indeed, in a recent fireside chat, GSMA Intelligence’s Principal Economist, Kalvin Bahia, told me that he believes we’re unlikely to see any big jumps in mobile internet adoption over the coming years:
“Do we expect to see everybody on Earth use mobile internet? Probably not. We [at GSMA Intelligence] don’t expect to see the current adoption rate of 51 percent rise to 100 percent… Even for adults aged 18 and above, we’ll probably see mobile internet adoption reach somewhere between 60 and 65 percent.”
However, Kalvin then went on to say that the World Bank has defined “universal accessibility” as being 90 percent adoption of the internet amongst people aged 10 and above by the year 2030.
This figure was specific to Sub-Saharan Africa, but if we were to apply it across the total global population, it’s clear that we’ve still got a long way to go before we reach that goal of universal accessibility.
For context, in order to achieve that target based on 2030 population estimates, we’d need to reach 7.2 billion internet users within the next 8 years – 2.25 billion more than we have today, or an increase of roughly 45 percent.
That would require internet users to continue growing at an average rate of 4.8 percent per year until 2030.
That average rate isn’t unrealistic given recent trends, but given that each additional user becomes harder and harder to convert, we’d likely need to see much faster rates over the next two years if we’re to come anywhere near that target.
As for ‘real’ social media use, I believe we’ll see growth rates start to decelerate over the next 3 to 5 years, especially now that social media users equate to 93.4 percent of internet users.
But as we approach universal adoption, growth rates become somewhat irrelevant; the more important figure will be how many people we can reach using connected tech.
Furthermore, to put “universal accessibility” in perspective, research from Statista puts the current global TV audience at 4.26 billion – i.e. lower than the latest figures for both mobile and internet adoption.
So, if you’re a marketer, don’t worry too much about slowing growth rates.
The far more interesting takeaway is that connected tech is already the best opportunity we’ve ever had to reach our audiences, and that opportunity just keeps getting better.
Want to learn more about what the state of digital looks like in 2022? Check out our full Digital 2022 Global Overview Report by clicking here.
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