Side by Side: How Many People Are Online?
Fiji’s government says more of its people use the internet than know how to, which is today’s letter from Suva, so it is worth checking how many are online elsewhere.
In today’s letter, Fiji’s deputy prime minister puts internet use above 85 percent and digital literacy at 48. The International Telecommunication Union, counting the same islands for 2024, puts use at 74.7 percent, so the ministry is ahead of the statisticians as well as the students. One measure for everyone: the ITU’s estimate of the share of individuals using the internet in 2024.
South Korea
97.9 percent, the highest here. Seoul has left so few people offline that each must be considered a policy choice. The remaining 2.1 percent are, statistically, the only Koreans with time to read this.
Australia
96.1 percent. Canberra has connected nearly everyone across a continent that is mostly distance, which is either a triumph of infrastructure or proof that the outback has better reception than the suburbs believe.
United Kingdom
95.5 percent. Britain is a fraction ahead of the United States and Canada, a lead it will mention at every opportunity, ideally online.
United States
94.7 percent. The internet’s birthplace is fourth among eight on the share of its people who use it, which is how inventors usually end up: credited, and slightly behind.
Canada
94.4 percent, three tenths of a point behind its neighbour, the one gap in the relationship that tariffs have not yet been asked to close.
Japan
85.5 percent. The nation of the bullet train has one person in seven offline, a level Fiji’s minister claims for his own islands. Somewhere in Tokyo a fax machine is taking this personally.
Mexico
83.1 percent, 2.4 points behind Japan. Mexico has nearly caught the world’s most famous technology culture, chiefly because the technology culture has been waiting for the paperwork.
Pakistan
57.3 percent, the lowest here. More than four in ten Pakistanis are offline, which gives Islamabad the largest audience in this comparison for its digital plans, provided they are announced on the radio.
Verdict
Seoul wins, and has nowhere left to grow but into the 2.1 percent. Washington invented the thing and placed fourth. Tokyo, the reliable future of every science-fiction film, is closer to Mexico than to Canberra. Islamabad has the most room to grow and the fewest people online to hear about it. Fiji’s minister, meanwhile, has given his islands roughly Japan’s score, which is the one achievement on this table that required no cables at all.