94.4% of internet users in the Philippines aged 16 and up use AI tools each month, but only 5.5% of internet users in the country aged 16 and up pay for subscriptions to an AI tool each month, the study finds
MANILA, Philippines – Media intelligence company Meltwater and creative agency We Are Social released the Digital 2027 report this October, providing data on worldwide digital trends.
The more than 900-page report seeks to provide worldwide statistics on the various aspects of digital daily life, from the adoption of artificial intelligence tools like generative AI, to the use of web browsers and mobile phones. It is aided by a series of individual deep dives by author Simon Kemp into specific aspects of the main report.
Some Philippine statistics
In the local country headlines report, the Philippines is said to have a total population of 118 million people, a figure that increased by 936,000 from last year.
The report also showed 149 million cellular phone connections in the country, or 126% compared to the total population of the Philippines. The figure likely infers people having more than one phone on hand.
Meanwhile, 95.9 million individuals — or 81.3% of the population — were using the internet, while the report mentioned there were 94.7 million social media user identities in the country, which represent a decline of about 1.1 million user identities.
The report also mentioned 94.4% of internet users in the Philippines aged 16 and up used AI tools each month. However, only 5.5% of internet users in the country aged 16 and up paid for subscriptions to an AI tool each month.
Within the Philippine context, 71.17% of active AI users aged 16 and up use AI tools to find information, 37.6% of active AI users aged 16 and up use AI tools to seek advice on problems, 32.8% of active AI users aged 16 and up used AI tools for personalized recommendations.
Further, 27.5% of Philippine internet users aged 16 and up believe AI benefits society overall.
GenAI tools, social media, and mobile
According to the report, 38.9% of the global population of 8.32 billion people — or around 3.24 billion — currently use generative AI tools each month.
This shows a growth of about 1.2 billion new users, though the report emphasizes a caveat of potential duplication —that a user may have more than one account for a generative AI service to decouple personal and work uses.
Meanwhile, social media user identities now number 5.81 billion or 69.9% of the world’s population, though a similar caveat applies here as some duplication due to decoupling personal and work social media identities may occur.
Citing two separate reports from GSMA Intelligence and Ericsson, there are now 5.86 billion unique mobile phone users worldwide as of the report’s release this month. Further information from Ericsson showed the 7.68 billion smartphones in use today account for nearly 90% of all active mobile phone handsets, and nearly 86% of total cellular mobile connections, with the caveat that some folks may have more than one smartphone.
Web browser use declines
The report said that across the world’s top 10,000 web domains, the total monthly web traffic declined by more than 10% since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022.
Combined traffic across the top 10,000 web domains fell by almost 50 billion visits per month between Q4 2022 and Q2 2026.
Further, there has been an 11.2% decline in the total time spent visiting the top 10,000 global domains over a two-year period, This fall is equivalent to more than 6.6 billion hours per month in that time frame.
Aside from the potential effects of AI use, the report suggests people are more readily using native mobile apps rather than using their browsers to get what they want from the internet.
That said, web users did load an average of just under 3 trillion pages per month across the world’s top 10,000 domains in the second quarter of 2026. The figure is up more than 2% compared to the same time period in 2024.
The full Digital 2027 report can be downloaded from this site. Meanwhile, Simon Kemp’s reports on some of the pertinent statistics are available here. – Rappler.com
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