Peru: internet penetration 2000-2021

Internet penetration in Peru has been growing steadily since 2000. In 2021, about 71.8 percent of the Peruvian population accessed the internet, up from approximately three percent at the beginning of the century.

User profile

Although Peru has more than 24 million people browsing the internet, this service has reached with greater force those generations that have experienced its development firsthand. In 2019, more than 85 percent of young adults between the ages of 19 and 24 accessed the Web, against nearly three out of four teens aged 12 to 18. Meanwhile, according to a survey conducted that same year in the South American country, almost half of Peruvian adults spent an average of one to two hours a day on the internet.

Online activities and COVID-19's impact

Since before the coronavirus outbreak in 2020, communication and information were already some of the main online activities carried out by Peruvians. However, the confinement and isolation measures implemented to contain the virus led to a reinforcement of these trends. During a survey, about 11 percent of respondents said they used websites and/or apps to communicate compared to eight percent before the pandemic, while news consumption grew by almost eight percentage points after the arrival of SARS-CoV-2 in the country.