Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2022 February 4

= February 4 =

Updating Chomsky's quote
In 1996 Noam Chomsky said The Internet is an elite organisation; most of the population of the world has never even made a phone call.

I assume he was referring to adults.

I suspect that his "most" has considerably reduced 25 years on. What percentage of adult humans in 2022 have never made a phone call? --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  09:12, 4 February 2022 (UTC)


 * In 2000, only 4 percent of people living in low- and middle-income countries had access to mobile phones. In 2015, that number rose to a whopping 94 percent. This was true even in sub-Saharan Africa, where there were 76 mobile cellular subscriptions for every 100 people, while only 68 percent of the region’s population had access to an improved water source.
 * The Technology Thats Making a Difference in the Developing World from 2017, so I expect that the figures are even higher now. Alansplodge (talk) 11:22, 4 February 2022 (UTC)


 * As of January 2021 there were 4.66 billion active internet users worldwide - 59.5 percent of the global population. Of this total, 92.6 percent (4.32 billion) accessed the internet via mobile devices. from Global digital population as of January 2021 Alansplodge (talk) 11:49, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I should point out that the two statistics are measuring different things; one is measuring the availability of mobile communication devices and the second is measuring the use of those devices to connect to the internet. While many people in the developed world use mobile devices as internet connectivity tools, they also are useful just as telephones, which may be how much of the world still uses them, which is why in 2015 94% of people had mobile phones, but in 2021 there were only 59.6 % of the world using the internet.  Many people may have access to phone networks for use as phones and may not have internet connectivity (either for lack of infrastructure OR because they live in oppressive regimes that limits their access to the internet).  -- Jayron 32 16:49, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Indeed (also non-smart phones are an awful lot cheaper). Alansplodge (talk) 21:50, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
 * We’ve also got the wiki articles: List of countries by smartphone penetration, which gives a representative sample of about 20 countries each year. There’s also List of countries by number of telephone lines in use which hasn’t been updated since 2010. List of countries by number of mobile phones in use includes both smartphones and other mobiles because it counts unique numbers, but that doesn’t map perfectly to unique people because some are business and some personal. Its lead makes the claim that globally, as of 2019, there were 104 phone numbers per 100 persons. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 19:58, 4 February 2022 (UTC)


 * I guess we could never know accurately, but the above gives me a ball-park idea. Thanks --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  07:26, 7 February 2022 (UTC)