What country uses the Internet the best?

Sweden has bypassed both the United States and the United Kingdom when it comes to countries that ace the Internet.

According to a new global index issued by the World Wide Web Foundation, the Swedes have excelled in categories such as web readiness, web use, and political openness to the Internet.

Described by the foundation as “the world’s first multi-dimensional measure of the Web’s growth, utility and impact on people and nations,” the Web Index was compiled by the man who started it all: the creator of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee.

The survey covers 61 developed and developing countries and “measures and ranks” them based on the following factors: Web Readiness, or the extent of to which infrastructure facilitates connectivity and institutional policies regulating web access; Web Use, or the percentage of people who use the Internet; and the Impact of the Web, or social, economic, and political indicators such as social networks and business Internet use.

Here are the top ten countries on the World Wide Web Foundation’s Web Index:

1. Sweden
2. United States of America
3. United Kingdom
4. Canada
5. Finland
6. Switzerland
7. New Zealand
8. Australia
9. Norway
10. Ireland

According to the index, Iceland has the highest percentage of web use, with 95 percent of its population on the Internet. As the Atlantic points out, some of the survey’s other findings were a bit more disconcerting. Only one in three people use the web globally and in Africa, this ratio drops to one in six. The report also finds that one in three countries have moderate to severe restrictions on Internet access.

Here are the bottom ten countries on the Index:

1. Nepal
2. Cameroon
3. Mali
4. Bangladesh
5. Namibia
6. Ethiopia
7. Benin
8. Burkina Faso
9. Zimbabwe
10. Yemen

Read the full report here.

[via the Atlantic]

Image: World Wide Web Foundation