IELTS Writing Task

Chart 1 shows the number of people using the Internet worldwide from 1995 to 2002. At large, the number that started at 26 millions has constantly increased from the beginning of 1995. The increase was rather gradual until 1999 when the figure drastically doubled from 195 millions to 451 millions. The expansion of the Internet use becomes once again steady from 451 millions at the beginning of 2000 to 552 millions in 2001, and then 580 millions in 2002.

Chart 2 shows the proportion of the Internet users in different parts of the world in 2003. The largest number of the Internet users resided in North America, consisting 53% of the total figure. Following USA and Canada is Europe where 24% of the world Internet users were found. The third largest number of the Internet users, 15% of all the users, lived around Asia and Pacific area. Moreover, 6% of the Internet users were from South America. Finally, Africa and Middle East accounted for 1% of the total Internet users respectively.

Overall, the charts show that the Internet has increased in popularity around the globe between 1995 and 2002. The expansion of the Internet use has been significant in that the figure has grown to be over twenty times bigger in just 7 years of time. Although the growth was immense, however, the impact on the regional diversity has been rather trivial. In 2003, 77% of the entire Internet users in the world were from the western hemisphere that consists of North America and Europe. This regional inclination suggests that the Internet use depends on national wealth, rather than population as Asia and Pacific area that boast the largest population size accounted for merely 15% of the world Internet users.