这个世界是不公平的，互联网在世界不同地区的普及率又再一次惨痛地揭示这个事实。看看这个不公平的世界对当今互联网用户区域分布有什么影响：
在我们列出其它图表之前，请先快速浏览下上图，你就会明白什么是所谓的“公平竞争”，其实根本不存在：
- 当今网络普及率是24.7%。
- 北美，虽然只占全球5%的人口，但是它的网民占了全球的15%，这主要归功于这里的网络普及率高达73.9%，全球之首。（北美是大洲中普及率最高的地方，但是个别国家的普及率比这还高。）
- 如果亚洲的普及率也和北美一样，那么亚洲会有28.1亿网民，这个数据是目前全球网民数量的1.7倍（目前全球市16.7亿网民）。
- 如果全球各地互联网普及率都能像北美一样高，那么世界上互联网用户将达到50亿。
当然，像上面这样的“假设”还可以有很多，但是这里我们不把它们作为这篇文章的主要部分，我们主要想搞清楚的是：互联网的普及率的不同如何影响了整个互联网人口。
全球人口分布 VS 上网人口分布
当你比较各大洲人口分布与互联网用户分布时，结果会是什么的呢？
首先，下图是全球66.7亿人口在各大洲的分布情况的饼图，如果都是公平的话，那么，全球网民的分布图应该与人口分布图是一样的结果，但是事实上却是不一样的。
现在我们看看网民在各大洲的实际分布。
由于各个洲的网络普及率不同，上图的比例发生了巨大变化，全球16.7亿网民在各个大洲的分布就显示为下图：
看看非洲缩小得真可怜，再看看亚洲也缩小了不少。虽然有庞大的人口，但是上网的人口却大大减少了。相反的是，像欧洲和北美地区，其互联网用户与实际 人口数相比却是大大膨胀了。可以说网络世界是一个有别于现实的世界，那就是互联网用户数量真正反映了世界不同地区的工业化程度。
附原文：
The world isn’t a fair place, and yet another way this is laid bare is the huge differences shown in Internet penetration among the population of the various world regions. We thought it would be interesting to see what kind of an effect this is having on the world Internet population of today.
First some quick observations before we head on to more charts, just to give you an idea of how level the playing field is NOT:
- Today’s world Internet penetration is 24.7%.
- North America, with only 5% of the world’s population, has 15% of the world Internet population thanks to having the world’s largest Internet penetration with 73.9% (largest for a world region, but there are individual countries with a higher percentage).
- If Asia had the same Internet penetration as North America, it would have 2.81 billion Internet users. That’s 1.7 times the current Internet population of the entire world (1.67 billion).
- If the entire world had the same Internet penetration as North America, the world Internet population would be 5 billion people.
There are lots of interesting “what if” scenarios like the above, but we don’t want to get too carried away or we’ll never get to the main part of this post, which is to look at how the differences in Internet penetration have affected the division of the Internet population as a whole.
World population share vs. Internet population share
What happens when you compare how the actual world population is divided with how the world’s Internet users are divided?
First off, here below is a pie chart that shows the share each world region has of the planet’s 6.77 billion people. This is also what the division of the Internet population would look like if the Internet penetration were equal all over the world, but of course it isn’t.
Now let’s look at the ACTUAL division of the world Internet population.
Thanks to the different levels of Internet penetration the balance shifts drastically. This is the share each region has of the world’s 1.67 billion Internet users:
Look at how Africa dwindles, look at how Asia shrinks. Giants in terms of population, but the weight of those populations are greatly diminished online. In contrast, regions like Europe and North America swell past the actual weight of their populations. You could say the Internet is a different world, one where the population truly reflects the different levels of industrialization in the world.
We could throw more statistics your way, but we’ll call it a day this time.
It’s when we see this kind of data that we really count ourselves lucky to live in Sweden, which has an Internet penetration of 80% and decent broadband connections for more or less anyone who wants it.