We Are Social/Hootsuite Report: A million new internet users came online every day in 2018
We Are Social, the socially-led creative agency, in collaboration with Hootsuite, a global leader in social media management, today released their Digital 2019 report, examining social media and digital trends around the world. Delving into data from across more than 230 countries and territories, the eighth annual report finds 367 million more people came online globally in 2018, adding approximately a million more people online every day.
Key Learnings:
Internet
The number of people accessing the internet now stands at 4.39 billion, up from 4.02 billion in 2018. The Middle East was the region with the biggest increase in internet users, up by 11% in 12 months, an addition of more than 18 million people.
Voice search is taking off, as had been widely tipped, with four in 10 global internet users using some kind of voice-controlled functionality. Indians are the most frequent users, with 51% employing voice functionality of some kind, while the Dutch have the lowest uptake – just 13%.
Google, YouTube and Facebook remain the most visited websites in the world. But there were two interesting new entries into the top 20 websites list: Netflix and Reddit. And no matter where you live, weather remains a constant obsession – it’s one of the top-20 most searched-for
terms in no fewer than three languages.
Internet users love video, with 92% watching some form of video online and 58% using the internet to stream television.
Social media
Almost three-and-a-half billion people are active on social media, accounting for 45% of the world’s population – up from 42% in 2018. Of these people, 3.25 billion access social media through mobile devices.
Users spend an average of two hours and 16 minutes on social networks daily. Filipinos remain the heaviest users, browsing social media for more than four hours a day, compared with just 36 minutes in Japan.
Generally speaking, the growth of mainstream social networks has slowed in Western countries, whereas newer platforms are showing a strong increase in active users, with TikTok, a Chinese social app similar to the now defunct short video network Vine, now being significantly bigger than more established platforms like Twitter, Reddit and LinkedIn.
Mobile
More than five billion people in the world (two thirds of the planet’s inhabitants), own a mobile phone. Forty-two per cent of us access social networks on some kind of mobile device. More than half of internet users said they bought something online using their phones in the previous month. Globally, 41% of internet users have accessed banking services via mobile, but in Thailand and Sweden more than seven in 10 report using mobile banking.
Two thirds of connected phones are smartphones and the most popular apps in the world are Facebook Messenger, Facebook and WhatsApp. Netflix is at number nine and music streaming service Spotify is at number 10, whereas TikTok is the fourth most downloaded smartphone app globally.
E-commerce
Three-quarters of all internet users reported buying products or services via the web in the previous month, with 55% on a mobile device. Total online spend on consumer goods worldwide during 2018 is estimated at $1.79 trillion, up by 14% on the previous year.
Internet users love to shop for clothes and make and book holidays more than anything else – in total $750 billion was spent on travel in 2018 and $525 billion on fashion and beauty.
Amazon, Nike and iPhone were the biggest search terms on Google Shopping in 2018, but a surprise entry came from Fortnite, in at number 20.
And despite all the media hype about Bitcoin, only 5.5% of internet users across the world say they own cryptocurrencies of some kind. This figure rises to 10.7% in South Africa – the highest of any country in the survey.
To view and download the Global Digital 2019 report go to: