The Cost of Internet Shutdowns in 2024
This report examines every major government-imposed internet shutdown in 2024, finding they cost the global economy $7.69 billion. For analysis from other years and the latest data, visit our Cost of Internet Shutdowns hub.
Internet Shutdowns: Economic Impact 2024
- $7.69 billion: economic cost of internet shutdowns in 2024
- 167 major government-imposed internet outages took place in 28 countries, the highest number of countries in a single year.
- 70,451 hours of government internet disruptions, a 20% increase on 2023 and highest to date. This included:
- Internet blackouts: 37,997 hours
- Social media blocks: 32,454 hours
- 648.4 million people affected by deliberate internet outages in 2024
- X (Twitter) was the most blocked social media platform, suffering 20,322 hours of deliberate disruption, followed by TikTok (8,115 hrs) and Signal (2,880 hrs).
- Pakistan: the single most affected nation ($1.62 billion), followed by Myanmar ($1.58 billion) and Sudan ($1.12 billion).
- Iraq: the nation with most internet shutdowns (61) for second successive year, all prompted by school exams.
- Myanmar and Azerbaijan: experiened the longest shutdowns in 2024, lasting the full year.
- Human rights impact: A third of government internet outages were associated with additional human rights abuses in 2024, most frequently restrictions on freedom of assembly.
What is the Cost of Internet Shutdowns Report?
This Global Cost of Internet Shutdowns report calculates the total economic impact of every major deliberate internet outage and social media shutdown around the world in 2024.
This kind of deliberate outage is internet censorship in its most extreme form. Not only do they infringe on citizens’ digital rights but they are also catastrophic acts of national economic self-sabotage.
Government internet outages in 28 countries lasting over 74,000 hours cost the global economy $7.69 billion in 2024.
While the cost of internet shutdowns may have dropped by 16% in 2024 compared to last year, there were more hours of deliberate internet disruption than ever before.
The duration of internet shutdowns was up 20% in 2024 compared to 2023. At the time of publication, this was the highest ever number of hours in a single year.
There were also 73% more hours of internet blackouts compared to last year, but 12% fewer hours of social media shutdowns.
Chart showing the yearly cost of internet shutdowns since 2019.
How Do We Calculate The Cost of Internet Shutdowns?
We constantly monitor for national and region-wide internet outages and social media shutdowns imposed by governments around the world.
After determining the duration and extent of the restrictions, we calculate their economic impact using the COST tool.
This tool was developed by internet monitoring NGO Netblocks. It is based on indicators from the World Bank, ITU, Eurostat and US Census.
WHAT’S INCLUDED IN OUR CALCULATIONS:
- Internet blackouts: internet access is completely cut off by the government. This extreme measure cannot be directly circumvented.
- Social media shutdowns: access to popular social media, such as Facebook, WhatsApp, TikTok or X is blocked. This can typically be circumvented by using a Virtual Private Network (VPN).
- Severe throttling: internet speeds have been reduced to 2G, which permits the use of SMS and voice calls only. This is an internet blackout in all but name.
Internet shutdowns are enforced through a variety of technical methods, from IP blocking and DNS filtering to BGP manipulation. For a detailed explanation of these tactics, see our latest Cost of Internet Shutdowns report.
This year’s report continues with the approach, first introduced in the 2023 edition, of excluding social media blocks once they are over 365 days long.
After this point, we consider it to be permanent censorship and assume the economic impact to have lessened as people are likely to have switched platforms by then.
The social media bans in Russia, for example, that drove the record-breaking spike in costs to the world economy in 2022 continue to be excluded from our reports despite being ongoing.
Note that we have included the current restrictions on X (Twitter) in Myanmar.
Although these were first imposed in 2021, access to X had largely been restored by the start of this year.
Since late February 2024, however, authorities in Myanmar once again started blocking access to X. As this was a new restriction, we treated it as a new shutdown and included it in our report.
This is also the second year we have included blocks of newer social media platforms, such as TikTok and Telegram. This means we are now once again more easily able to make year-over-year comparisons.
Why Do We Track The Cost of Internet Shutdowns?
We passionately oppose internet censorship and the restriction of internet access by governments as a form of social control.
Our goal remains to keep public attention focused on the damage caused by internet shutdowns.
This damage is both direct, in terms of the economic and human cost, and indirect, in that it forces people to use unsafe VPNs to try to bypass the unfair restrictions imposed upon them.
Internet Shutdowns 2024: Cost by Country
The following data table shows all countries that have experienced a major internet shutdown in 2024. The table is ordered from greatest to least economic impact, measured in US dollars.
The data table also indicates the nature of any additional human rights abuses perpetrated during each internet shutdown. A cross indicates that the human right specified was violated during the period around the internet outage. Scroll or swipe to see all the columns.
For data on individual internet shutdowns, see the Cost of Internet Shutdowns 2024 Data Sheet.
Internet Shutdowns 2024: Cost by Region
This data table shows the total economic cost of all major deliberate internet outages in 2024, broken down by the global region. It is ordered by economic impact, measured in US dollars. Russia is included as part of Europe, and Turkey, Asia.
Asia was by far the most-affected region, thanks to the particularly impactful internet restrictions in Pakistan, Myanmar, Bangladesh and India. These nations were four of the six most-affected countries in 2024.
Both Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa had around ten times as many hours or more of internet shutdowns as the next most-affected regions.
The bar chart below shows the economic impact of all major internet shutdowns in 2024 on each of the global regions where the disruptions occurred, broken down by context, i.e. the reason why the internet outage was implemented.
Bar chart showing reasons why governments blocked internet access in 2024, by region.
As you can see civil conflict was a major cause of government internet disruption in 2024, with the ongoing situations in Sudan and Myanmar having the greatest economic impact.
Most Blocked Social Media Platforms in 2024
This table shows the total amount of time individual social media platforms were blocked for in 2024. It’s ordered from greatest to least number of hours. Note the total number of hours exceeds the total duration of social media shutdowns as multiple platforms are often blocked in each outage.
The table also indicates the number of individual disruptions that involved each social media platform.
This chart shows the split of social media shutdowns in 2024 by the total duration of incidents involving each social media platform.
Chart showing which social media platforms were blocked for the longest time in 2024.
The extended blockades of X (Twitter) in Pakistan, Myanmar and Venezuela meant that it was by far the most disrupted social media platform in 2024.
The ongoing TikTok shutdown in Kyrgyzstan that was imposed in April was responsible for the majority of the 8,115 hours of blocks. However shorter but still significant blocks in Senegal and New Caledonia show that the platform is increasingly a target for governments looking to restrict internet access.
Internet Shutdowns 2024: Cost by Context
This data table shows the total economic cost of all major internet shutdowns in 2024 grouped by context, i.e. what prompted local authorities to cut internet access. The table is ordered from greatest to least economic impact, measured in US dollars.
The table also indicates the number of incidents in each category and the total duration of the internet outages, in hours.
This chart shows the split of the economic cost of all major government internet outages in 2024 by context, i.e. what prompted local authorities to cut internet access.
Chart showing the reasons for internet shutdowns in 2024 with the most economic impact.
This next chart shows the split of reasons for all major government internet outages in 2024 by frequency.
Chart showing the most common reasons for internet shutdowns in 2024.
As the charts show, while more than half of internet shutdown incidents were due to exams, their economic impact was much more limited. These shutdowns may have been numerous but they were typically just a couple of hours long.
Nevertheless, this approach to preventing cheating on exams still cost the world economy over $400 million and disrupted the lives of millions of innocent people.
At the other end of the scale, the internet outages imposed due to conflict were few but very drawn out, causing severe additional harm in countries whose people were already suffering.
2024 was the third year in a row where this was the prime cause for the internet shutdowns with biggest economic impact.
DETAILS OF INDIVIDUAL INTERNET SHUTDOWNS:
Download the Cost of Internet Shutdowns 2024 Data Sheet for details of each individual shutdown.
For each disruption, there’s dates, any local regions affected, a cost breakdown, the type of outage it was, which platforms were blocked, how many people were affected, and the reason for the shutdown.
Note that while we state that there were 167 shutdowns in 2024, there are more entries than that. This is because we often have to break down a disruption into multiple parts in order to properly calculate its cost.
Internet Shutdowns Research Methodology
We review every documented government internet outage and social media shutdown globally in a given year.
We include deliberate national internet blackouts along with regional disruptions that are on a sufficient scale to be economically significant.
The nature, duration and severity of each internet outage are sourced from Netblocks real-time graphic data and reports, IODA, the SFLC.IN Internet Shutdown Tracker, and OONI’s internet censorship measurement tools.
The economic cost of each internet shutdown is calculated using the Netblocks Cost of Shutdown Tool, which is based on the Brookings Institution method, with CIPESA’s specialized model used for sub-Saharan Africa. Regional shutdown costs are derived from the region’s economic output as a proportion of national GDP.
Partial internet outages are calculated as a proportion of the above costs based on the most up-to-date internet market-share information publicly available for the affected country.
Internet user data is sourced from the World Bank and government reports. For social media shutdowns, the total number of internet users in the affected location is cited rather than the number of local users of a specific platform. This is because such internet outages affects all internet users’ ability to access social media regardless of their active use of a particular platform.
The authors of all our investigations abide by the journalists’ code of conduct.