Internet: Facts & Figures

General

In 2002, 490 million people have Internet access. This figure will double by the year 2005.

Adults over 55 are the fastest growing group of Internet users. In the US alone they will increase from 11.1 million users in 1999 to 34.1 million users in 2004.

85% of doctors are Internet users.

Nearly 75% of journalists go online daily, spending an average of 13 and a half hours per week online.

76% of Internet users get their news online with 70% getting their health information online. In addition 50% get their local entertainment information online.

59% of 18-24 year olds say that they get better news online than in newspapers.

50% of Internet users regularly use e-mail rather than the phone to contact their clients and suppliers.

Online gambling generated $ 835 million in sales in 1998.

An estimated 2.5 billion hours are wasted online every year as people wait for pages to download.

After English, Japanese and German are the two most popular languages on the net.

China is the fastest growing Internet market in the world currently.

Approximately 60% of Internet users within the USA have made an online purchase.

AOL has over 40 million registered users for its Instant Messenger service, sending over 430 million messages every day.

Currently there are approximately 36 million different websites on the Internet. However the top 25,000 account for over 50% of Internet traffic.

Use of home PC's to surf the net has dropped by 40% suggesting that more and more people are surfing at work.

90% of American children aged 5-17 now use computers.

40% of American home users have downloaded MP3 files. On average they have 305 music files each.

The USA has the largest online population with approximately 42% of the global market. China now sits in second place with 6.6%, followed by Japan (5%). The UK, Canada and Germany are all around the 4% mark.

Over 90% of surfers use Internet Explorer to surf.

Yahoo reports that over 30% of e-mail addresses are changed annually as people often forget personal information and passwords. Another reason may be that people change jobs and therefore e-mail addresses.

Over 80% of educators in the USA believe that web based technology has a positive effect on student success.

UK

In the UK currently more than one-quarter of the adult population have used the Internet in the last month.

40% of the British adult population use the Internet somewhere.

A third of the UK population use e-mail.

11% of the UK population use Interactive digital television services.

79% of people are aware that you can search for information on the Internet. 78% of people are aware that you can shop online. 73% of people are aware that you can organise your banking online.

According to the BBC less than 10% of Europeans would be willing to pay for online content.

According to Forrester Research one in three Europeans has downloaded music from the Internet.

According to NOP Research 60% of British children know what a homepage is. However in the same survey only 9% of children knew what the preface of a book was.

Nearly 60 percent of kids in the UK could identify a hard drive as being part of a computer, but only a third of kids in the UK knew that a hardback was a type of book.

Around 70 percent of children also knew that WWW stood for the World Wide Web, but less than 25 percent of them knew that RSVP was asking them to reply to an invitation.

Almost three quarters of children said they had used the Net to find information for a school project, while more than a half of them said that information they had learned online had helped.
45% of British parents believe that the Internet is a better medium for learning than television.

Nine in ten schools in the European Union now have Internet access, and pupils have access in eight in 10 of those, according to the European Commission.

The average number of students per computer with Internet access is 24, while the average number of students per offline computer is 12. 

The total online population in Europe will grow to over 200 million by 2007 - a 68 percent increase in population from 2001.