Internet usage in the Asia-Pacific region - statistics & facts

Country differences in internet usage

The number of online users in the Asia-Pacific region exploded in 2021, reaching over 2.5 billion. Half of these users were from China and India. Despite this massive increase in internet users, there is still a significant share of the population in some countries that are excluded from the digital world. Mobile internet coverage gaps of one to ten percent were remaining in some countries such as Pakistan and Indonesia. However, the biggest gaps were in usage – approximately two-thirds of the population in Bangladesh was not connected to the mobile internet as of 2020.

Along with access to the internet, freedom of use is also highly varied among Asia-Pacific countries. Various restrictions and unspoken rules are in place for internet use in many countries. China was one of the countries with the lowest internet freedom, while Taiwan had the highest in the Asia-Pacific region. Hong Kong had exceptionally high international bandwidth per internet user as a global hub, while the likes of China and Mongolia were more self-contained with low international bandwidth rates.

Popular online activities

Some of the most popular activities on the internet are social media, e-commerce, and digital media such as gaming and streaming. Nowadays, internet usage is synonymous with social media usage. Social media penetration rates in the Asia-Pacific region were as high as internet penetration rates. Asia-Pacific internet users were active on multiple social media platforms, but Facebook was by far the most popular one in the region, with nearly 1.3 billion monthly active users. E-commerce is another popular online activity with over two billion users in Asia. In many Asian countries, including Thailand, Malaysia, and South Korea, over 60 percent of the adult online population shopped online as often as every week. In addition, social media has brought about a new form of e-commerce – social commerce. Large markets such as China, India, and Southeast Asia are increasingly interested in shopping on social media.

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