We Are Social and Hootsuite have published research on the digital landscape around the world for Q1 2017. The study found that global internet penetration has reached 51%, with 3.8 billion people now online. This is an increase of 1% since the previous quarter. It seems that many of these new internet users are going online via mobile. 66% of the world's population now have a mobile phone, and web traffic from mobile phones has increased by 25% compared to last year. The study also looked at social media use around the globe. 2.9 billion people are social media users, equivalent to 39% of the world's population. This is up 4% on the previous quarter. Facebook, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, YouTube and the Chinese social network WeChat are the 5 most popular social media platforms worldwide.Â
