Visualising the Digital Divide
By Shu Takahashi
The Internet has become a cornerstone of modern society, enabling access to education, economic opportunity, and global connectivity. Yet nearly 2.8 billion people have never been online. What drives this gap, who bears its costs, and what can be done about it?
Share of Population Using the Internet
In 2024, 99.8% of Icelanders used the Internet.
In Chad, it was only 13.2%.
Let's go back to the year 1998, five years after the World Wide Web was released.
Through the early 2000s, Internet access spread rapidly across much of the world. The techno-utopianism of the era held that it was only a matter of time before everyone came online.
Yet as of 2023, nearly 2.8 billion people, over a third of the global population, had never been online.
Consequences of the Divide
The Internet has become a key pillar of modern life. For those who remain offline, it means fewer opportunities to learn, find work, and connect with people and services.
Of these gaps, access to knowledge and education stands out, and Wikipedia illustrates this concretely. The website has become the Internet’s de facto encyclopedia and the first stop for students, journalists, and researchers worldwide.
In May 2026, per-person access in the US was X% higher than in Kiribati. Some countries block Wikipedia entirely, and so do not appear in this data at all. The divide is not only economic. In some places, it is enforced.
Even within the most connected countries in the world, the divide persists. Students without Internet access at home score consistently lower on PISA reading assessments, in every country measured.
Not all Internet access is equal. Many developing countries rely heavily on mobile networks rather than physical cables. While this can cheaply provide wide coverage, it’s often slower and less reliable than cable-based broadband.
Slow and inconsistent connections make it difficult to stream a lecture, load a textbook, or follow an online class.
The most watched TED talk of all time, “Do Schools Kill Creativity?” by Sir Ken Robinson, takes P hours to download in [COUNTRY A]. In [COUNTRY B], it would take less than Q minutes.