Global Internet Access is Even Worse than Dire Reports Suggest

Four years ago, the United Nations predicted that more than half of the global population would be connected to the internet by 2017, buoyed in part by “the fastest growing technology in human history”: mobile broadband. The world missed the mark. Now the UN expects to achieve that goal by the end of 2019, and that still leaves an estimated 3.8 billion people offline. The connected population grew by 19 percent in 2007; in 2017 it grew by less than 6 percent. Hidden in the broad number of people the UN already considers to be online is a bleaker picture, one in which even that access is severely limited by factors both economic and cultural.

Any solution requires a recognition of the gender gap in global internet access, and the array of forces that can cause and compound the problem. [T]hat’s the thing about broad numbers on global internet access: Hiding inside them are stories of individual lives and smaller divides. The global rate of growth is slowing, yes, but the reality is even worse. And that means billions of people, already some of the most vulnerable in the world among them, are being left behind.