2.2 billion people did not use the internet on any device in 2025. This is the ITU offline measure.
ITU, Facts and Figures 2025
Evidence, with its limits
The evidence behind the case
Different measures answer different questions. Each number should be read alongside its source, reference year, denominator, and uncertainty.
Explore the pathways ↗Quarter Hour is a nonprofit corporation incorporated in Virginia, United States, in 2026.
Source basis: the founding evidence compilation completed on October 27, 2026. Each figure retains its own reference year and named source.
The evidence below explains the context for our mandate: digital and economic inclusion for immigrants and newcomers, refugees, asylees, asylum seekers, internally displaced people, diaspora and host communities, and communities facing economic marginalization, including BIPOC communities in the United States, across the United States and internationally.
The cited organizations are sources of public evidence, never partners or endorsers of Quarter Hour. Nothing on this page is a claim of Quarter Hour impact, program eligibility, or delivered results.
Read the measures before comparing the numbers
ITU's offline count concerns non-use of the internet on any device. GSMA's mobile-internet non-use count concerns a different measure and can include people connected by other means.
These counts must not be added, averaged, or interchanged. The mobile usage and coverage gaps are shares of the world population.
People, adults, and households have different denominators. Poverty measures and reference years differ.
ESTIMATE and MODELLED identify figures that must not be read as observed program results. The AI-use surveys do not assess skills or explain why someone chooses not to use a tool.
Global: access, economic participation, and possible gains
Internet use in 2025: 94% in high-income countries and 23% in low-income countries.
ITU, Facts and Figures 2025
3.4 billion people were not using mobile internet at the end of 2025. Some may have used the internet by other means.
GSMA, State of Mobile Internet Connectivity Report 2026
At the end of 2025, the mobile-internet usage gap was 38% of the world population; the coverage gap was 3%. The first group lived within mobile broadband coverage but did not use mobile internet.
GSMA, State of Mobile Internet Connectivity Report 2026
810 million adult women in low- and middle-income countries were not using mobile internet, according to the 2026 report.
GSMA, Mobile Gender Gap Report 2026, via its wire release
831 million people were in extreme poverty in 2025, below $3.00 a day at 2021 purchasing power parity.
World Bank, Poverty and Inequality Update, Fall 2025
1.3 billion adults age 15 and older had no financial account. Global Findex 2025 uses surveys conducted in 2024; an account includes a financial-institution or mobile-money account.
World Bank, Global Findex Database 2025
117.8 million people were forcibly displaced worldwide at the end of 2025. This is an umbrella count, not a single program population; the record names refugees, internally displaced people, asylum seekers, and others in need of international protection.
UNHCR, Global Trends 2025, as attributed in the evidence base
At the end of 2025, low- and middle-income countries hosted 68% of refugees and others in need of international protection; 65% were hosted in neighboring countries.
UNHCR, Global Trends 2025, as attributed in the evidence base
MODELLED: a 10% increase in mobile broadband penetration was associated with 2.5%-2.8% higher GDP per capita in ITU econometric work covering least developed countries, landlocked developing countries, and small island developing states. The panel covered 2000-2017; this is not a program forecast.
ITU, Economic impact of broadband study series, to 2020
MODELLED: closing the mobile-internet gender gap in low- and middle-income countries over 2023-2030 could add about $1.3 trillion to GDP. This is a scenario result, not realized income or an organizational return.
GSMA, Mobile Gender Gap Report 2026, via its wire release
These figures do not supply a global AI-adoption or skills rate, or a numerical measure of algorithmic or language representation. The modelled economic results are associations or scenarios, not returns attributable to this organization.
United States: participation remains uneven
83% of people age 3 and older used the internet in 2023, compared with 80% in 2021, representing about 13 million additional users.
NTIA, Internet Use Survey 2023
12% of people lived in households with no internet connection in 2023. This is a share of people, not a share of households.
NTIA, Internet Use Survey 2023
In 2023, 54% of households earning under $25,000 had both fixed and mobile connections, compared with 80% of households earning $100,000 or more.
NTIA, Internet Use Survey 2023
4.2% of households, or 5.6 million households, were unbanked in 2023.
FDIC, household survey 2023, via the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
14.2% of households, or 19.0 million households, were underbanked in 2023: they had an account but also relied on alternative financial services.
FDIC, household survey 2023, via the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
The official poverty rate in 2024 was 10.6%, representing 35.9 million people.
US Census Bureau, Poverty in the United States: 2024
The foreign-born population was 50.2 million, or 14.8% of the population, in 2024. This is not a refugee count or an estimate of program eligibility.
ACS 2024, as reported by CRS; cited through EveryCRSReport
34% of US adults had ever used ChatGPT in Pew's 2025 survey. This measures use of a named tool, not digital or AI competence.
Pew Research Center, ChatGPT survey, February-March 2025
About 51% of US adults did not use AI chatbots at all in Pew's February 2026 survey. Non-use is not a measure of inability, harm, or lack of interest.
Pew Research Center, Americans and AI 2026
The national trends do not prove any program's effectiveness. The foreign-born total is not a count of refugees or potential participants. The named-tool and broader chatbot surveys are not one comparable trend.
Displacement hotspots: illustrative case from the founding compilation
Our international scope spans displacement hotspots including Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, Yemen, Palestine, Congo, and other displacement and hosting contexts. Within the founding compilation, Sudan and its neighboring hosting contexts provide one documented case showing how humanitarian need, displacement, poverty, and pre-war connectivity and payment baselines interact, and where data gaps remain.
33.7 million people in Sudan required humanitarian assistance in the 2026 needs assessment. This is not a digital-exclusion count.
UN OCHA, Sudan Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan 2026, Summary
ESTIMATE: 9.3 million internally displaced people in Sudan in the 2025 IOM DTM series, as cited by UNHCR. Includes displacement before April 2023.
UNHCR, Sudan Situation Overview, Global Appeal 2026
6,409,546 internally displaced people in the separate UNHCR portal series, updated September 20, 2026. Different counting basis from S4; not a replacement, trend comparison, or figure to merge with it.
UNHCR portal series; situation map dated October 5, 2026
3,695,741 newly arrived refugees and asylum seekers outside Sudan since April 2023, in the portal series updated October 5, 2026. The row covers Egypt, Chad, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, Libya, and the Central African Republic.
UNHCR portal series; supplied citation is the September 30, 2026 dashboard
4.9 million refugees, asylum seekers, and returnees in the broader cross-border appeal accounting, as of October 2025. Includes returnees and is not directly comparable with S6.
UNHCR, Sudan Situation Overview, Global Appeal 2026
Sudan hosted 909,744 refugees as of September 30, 2026.
UNHCR Sudan dashboard, September 30, 2026
ESTIMATE: extreme poverty affected 59% of Sudan's population in 2025, compared with 48% in 2023. This source does not specify the poverty line and should not be equated with the global figure in G14.
World Bank, Sudan country page, 2025 estimate
28.7 people per 100 used the internet in 2022. This ITU/World Bank series, reproduced by FRED, ends before the April 2023 war and is not a current connectivity estimate.
FRED, ITNETUSERP2SDN, underlying World Bank/ITU data (2022)
1% of surveyed adults used mobile money in selected displacement-affected communities in West Darfur, January-February 2022; sample: 1,547 adults. This is not a national or wartime rate.
GSMA, reporting an NRC assessment, West Darfur factsheet 2022
68% of adults in the same West Darfur survey used peer-to-peer airtime credit transfer as a transfer mechanism. This does not establish current demand for, or readiness to adopt, a particular financial product.
GSMA, reporting an NRC assessment, West Darfur factsheet 2022
The two Sudan IDP series retain their different counting bases and dates. The cross-border series also differ in scope and date, including whether returnees are counted. No combined total or implied trend is presented.
The connectivity baseline and West Darfur survey predate the current war. The local survey cannot describe all of Sudan. Comparable host-country access and poverty data, current Sudan connectivity, and a verified US Sudanese population count remain gaps in the evidence base.
What this evidence does not establish
It does not quantify a single total cost of digital or AI exclusion, the share of poverty caused by either divide, psychological harm, or the gains a particular program could deliver.
No figure here implies a Sudan office, field operations, transfers, or available services, and nothing on this page represents Quarter Hour impact.
Sources and citation notes
Row IDs link to the URLs retained from the evidence base. Every institution cited on this page is a source of public research or statistics, never a partner of Quarter Hour. The selected set is reproduced from the founding case; no additional figure is introduced here.
Banking rows U7-U8 cite the Federal Reserve's summary of FDIC findings. U16 cites CRS through EveryCRSReport. G12 and G24 cite GSMA's own wire release.
G20 and G22 use the broad UNHCR page in the file, not a pinned report link. S6's date is recorded in its evidence row; its URL points to the September dashboard. These citation routes remain visible for readers.
Item G21 from the founding compilation is omitted here because its component figures do not reconcile directly with G20, and we do not assume a correction.
Evidence discipline is a core organizational commitment at Quarter Hour. Our methodology draws on strong empirical foundations, including global randomized evaluations of the Graduation Approach and decomposition studies showing that human coaching is an active ingredient that cannot be cut without sharply eroding outcomes. At the same time, we are transparent about the limits of current knowledge: our integrated 15-minute framework and our adaptation of Prosperity Graduation for the United States safety-net and labor context work as a combined system into an open empirical gap. We separate activity, output, participant change, and causal impact across our evidence standards.
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Our evidence protocols are built directly into the Quarter Hour methodology, which grades every claim from initial activity through independently verified impact.