

Image credit: OECD (2014, Age of first access to the Internet, 2012, in Measuring the Digital Economy, OECD Publishing.)

In 2013, the Internet grew a great deal, adding a number of new users equivalent to about the population of the United States. The caveat: even that growing global online population tends to look a lot like that of the United States -- relatively well-off, generally educated, and fairly young.

According to this year's edition of the "Measuring the Information Society" report from the United Nations's International Telecommunication Union, by the end of 2014, the Internet will be used by 3 billion people around the world. That's an increase of 300 million people since last year, and it means we're quickly approaching the point where half of the world's population will be online.

Less encouraging for fans of the Internet, though, is that usage is not distributed evenly yet. For example, about 90 percent of the adult populations of Luxembourg, the Netherlands, the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden), and Switzerland are using the Internet. But fewer than 60 percent of adults in Greece, Italy, Mexico, and Turkey are online, according to another new Internet data report out this week, this one from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, a collection of 34 developed countries.

"Differences in Internet uptake are linked primarily to age and educational factors, often intertwined with income levels," reads the OECD report. "In most countries, uptake by young people is nearly universal, but there are wide differences for older generations."

Indeed, in those nearly three dozen developed countries, the disparities are greatest at the very beginning and very end of the age scale.

While among young adults, the rates stay fairly consistent across OECD countries -- some 95 percent of 16-24-year-olds go online, with the vast majority doing so daily -- there are wide differences in how early a start kids get. In the Netherlands, Estonia, and the Nordic countries, 80 percent of students went online before they had turned 10 years old. And yet, just about 30 percent of students in Greece and the Slovak Republic began using the Internet before they hit their first double-digit birthday.

Meanwhile, greater than 75 percent of seniors -- those between 55 and 74 years of age -- in Denmark, Iceland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Sweden used the Internet within the three months of the survey. But that rate drops to less than 10 percent of Internet used by seniors in Mexico and Turkey.

Income disparities play out in various ways, too, according to the reports. As Internet users, finds the OECD report, we're becoming increasingly "nomadic." That is, we're tending more and more to go online through mobile devices: in OECD countries, 40 percent of adults get onto the Internet through their cellphones. While, according to the ITU, mobile is very often the way that people are getting online in the developing world, mobile broadband still remains out of reach for many. "Mobile broadband," concludes the report, "is six times more affordable in developed countries than in developing countries."

One added note: the ITU report finds that the rate at which Internet users are participating in creating the World Wide Web varies greatly, too. Take the registration of domain names, one critical step in the setting up of a new Web site. In 2013, users in Europe and the Americas accounted for 80 percent of newly-registered domain names. But less than 1 percent of total domain name registrations happened in Africa.

All of which means that while there's a great deal of room for the Internet to grow, there's also a tremendous amount of growth currently taking place. And if you're pro-Internet, that latter bit, at least, is something to be thankful for.