60% of Nigerians are Still not Connected to the Internet and Only About 10% are Active on Social Media

The Digital 2020 Global Overview Report provides some insights into internet access and the global digital world. Compiled by We Are Social and Hootsuite, the report also shows that digital, mobile, and social media have become a part of everyday life for people all over the world – including in Africa.

According to the report, 169.2 million Nigerians have mobile (phone) connections. This represents 83% penetration of the total population of 203.6 million people. 50% of the population live in urban areas.

85.49 million Nigerians have internet access. This represents 42% of the total population. However, only 27 million of them have social media accounts that they run actively.

60% of the world is online

Global internet penetration has reached new heights as 298 million new members joined the online community in 2019. This brings global internet access to 4.54 billion people, indicating a 7% increase from January 2019.

This leaves just about 3.2 billion (40%) of the world’s population still unconnected to the internet. Of that amount of unconnected people, 1 billion are from the Asian continent. Africa comes next, accounting for 27% of the total with 870 million unconnected to the internet.

Age and gender still a major factor for internet connection

Africa has about 1.2 billion people. With 870 million without internet access, the continent only has about 400 million people connected to the internet. This is far less than 50% of the total number of unconnected folks. According to the report, one of the reasons for this is the fact that more than half the continent’s total population is below the age of 20.

The situation is not very different in Southern Asia where more than 460 million people are below the age of 13. This demography accounts for a large fraction of 1 the billion unconnected people there.

Gender is also a critical determinant of internet access. According to data from the ITU, women are more likely to be ‘unconnected’ than men. This is largely due to cultural reasons which results in economic difference in continents like Africa and Asia. This gender gap therefore accounts for the large number of unconnected persons to the internet.

You will most likely spend 100 cumulative days Online in 2020

Currently, the average internet user spends 6 hours and 43 minutes online each day – 3 minutes less than January 2019. Cumulatively, it is expected that you will most likely spend 100 days online this year.

This means in total, the world’s connected users will spend 1.25 billion years online in 2020, and more than one-third of that time will be spent using social and communications apps.

Facebook is Still King

Facebook topped the charts when it comes to active social media users. The numbers suggests that the platform should have already passed 2.5 billion monthly active users and user numbers continued to grow steadily in most countries in 2019.

However, marketers can’t reach all of these users with Facebook ads, as the total addressable Facebook audience is about 1.95 billion. This means marketers can reach one-third of the world’s adults (18 and above). This makes Facebook one of the best platforms, still, for online advertising.

People Love Tik Tok

People love to watch videos a lot. Hence why the video-sharing platform, TikTok is widely used. The platform has over 800 million monthly active users. 500 million of these active users are in China, while just about 300 million are distributed among the rest of the world.

This means, Chinese users account for 80% of the total time spent using TikTok in 2019. Users in India account for another 10% of the total. This massive numbers have seen Tik Tok rise to become the 6th app in mobile ranking last year.

More people are becoming concerned about privacy

Privacy remains an important issue for internet users around the world. The report notes that 64% of global internet users are worried about how companies use their data. This is an increase from the 63% reported in January 2019.

As such people are more distrustful of the things on the internet now than before.

On the other hand more people between the ages of 16-64 are using ad blocking tools than before. About 50% of internet users now use ad blockers compared to the 47% from last year January.

People still spend on games

More than 4 in 5 internet users aged 16 to 64 around the world play video games every month. This means about 3.5 billion people around the world play games, with majority (69%) playing on their smartphones and 25% playing with game consoles.

And people are spending more on games, as gamers spent more than US$150 billion on games in 2019.

Ecommerce is still on the rise

The rate of ecommerce adoption is on the rise globally. Roughly 75% of the world’s internet users aged 16 to 64 buy something online each month, with internet users in Indonesia, Thailand, and Poland having the highest rates.

The report notes that the average ecommerce shopper spends about $500 on online purchases of consumer goods each year, with Travel the largest category by online consumer spend, $1.19.

Video games received the least spendings with $83.15 billion.

In conclusion…

Social media and apps have become a part of our daily to day activities. Hence it is important that in 2020, businesses seize these mobile technologies to scale their brands.

Also, while ecommerce might be having its issues in Nigeria and Africa, it is still in good form globally.

It is also important that Africa improves internet access in order not be left out of these trends.