Worldwide, 75 per cent of people aged between 15 and 24 use the Internet in 2022, 10 percentage points more than among the rest of the population (65 per cent). There are signs that the generational gap is shrinking. In 2020, the difference between the penetration rate among young people (71 per cent) and the rest of the population (57 per cent) was 14 percentage points.
In all regions of the world, people aged between 15 and 24 are more connected than people who are older or younger than that. Universality, defined as more than 95 per cent Internet use, has already been reached in this age group in high-income and upper-middle-income economies. The biggest gap in relative terms is observed in low-income economies, where 39 per cent of young people use the Internet, compared with only 23 per cent for the rest of the population.