Digital 2023 Global Overview Report

Team Locowise posted on 26 January 2023

Locowise is a proud data partner of the Global Digital Reports, published by Datareportal in partnership with We Are Social and Meltwater.

The Digital 2023 Global Overview Report is packed full of 400+ charts and 10,000 words. The latest report highlights some of the most important changes seen in years.

The biggest collection of data and trends ever shared in the series of reports is an essential read to discover the evolving digital behaviours worldwide. As people become more considered and purposeful in their online activities, it’s important to prioritise quality over quantity for your digital strategy moving forward.

Are you focusing on key markets? Look out for the Digital 2023 Local Country Headline reports, the complete collection will begin publishing in mid-February 2023.  

The population:

Firstly, it’s important to consider how the population is evolving and where you can reach your target audience. 

▪️ At the start of 2023, the world’s population reached 8.01 billion.

▪️ 5.44 billion people are now using a mobile phone in early 2023, this is 68% of the total global population.

▪️ There are 5.16 billion internet users in the world today, equivalent to 64.4% of the population.

▪️ 60% of the population uses social media, with 4.76 billion users worldwide. While this year’s net addition equates to 3%, overall the increase has slowed over recent months. 

Key headlines: 

Below are more headline statistics shared within the report. There are heaps to cover, so this is just a snippet of what you can discover.

▪️ The time spent online has declined by almost 5% year on year. GWI reports that the typical user has reduced the amount of time they spend using the internet by 20 minutes per day since this time last year. The average working-age internet user now spends 6 hours and 37 minutes per day online. This figure is close to the daily average for Q3 2019 – shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic. 

▪️ 57.8% of users cite “finding information” as their primary reason for using the internet today.

▪️ Perhaps the biggest beneficiary of the pandemic has been the digital advertising industry. Statista data shows that digital’s share of total global ad spend has increased by a relative 27.7% since 2019, up from 57.4% in 2019 to 73.3% in 2022. But as you might expect, digital ad spending varies considerably between countries, so check out the full report for country-specific data. 

▪️ There has been a 12.7% increase year-on-year in the daily time spent listening to podcasts, it is now 1 hour and 2 minutes. 

▪️ 51.3% of the population in India is unconnected from the internet.

▪️ GWI data shows that the typical working-age internet user now spends more than 2.5 hours per day using social platforms, which is the highest figure we’ve seen. This increase has occurred despite the decline in overall time spent using the internet. 4 in every 10 minutes spent online is now attributable to social media activities. 

▪️The average number of social platforms actively used each month is 7.2.

▪️ 74.7% of users aged 16 to 64 use social media to research brands and products they’re considering buying. 

▪️ The average number of page posts per day on Facebook is 1.27. Engagement is highest for posts sharing photos at 0.12% and lowest for link posts at 0.03%. Pages with fewer than 10,000 fans receive the highest engagement rate at 0.31%.

▪️ The average number of page posts per day on Instagram is 1.77. Single photo posts account for the highest percentage at 45.3%. However, carousel posts receive the highest level of engagement at 0.76%. Business accounts with fewer than 10,000 followers receive the highest engagement rate at 0.93%

For more of these insights, read the full report!