The Social Cost of a Hyperconnected Society Nearly seventy million Pakistanis are active on social media, broadband has crossed 150 million subscribers, and almost a quarter of the country now names Facebook as its primary source of information about the world. We built the connection faster than we built anything to protect ourselves from what it would cost.

Abstract

By late 2025, Pakistan had roughly 80 million active social media user identities, according to DataReportal's analysis, out of a population now carrying more than 190 million mobile subscriptions and over 150 million broadband connections across a fibre backbone exceeding 230,000 kilometres. Internet penetration has crossed 60 percent nationally. Mishal Pakistan's 2026 State of Freedom Report found that nearly a quarter of Pakistanis — 24.8 percent — now name Facebook as their primary source of information about the world, ahead of WhatsApp at 19.9 percent and every traditional news outlet combined. We talk about these numbers, when we talk about them at all, as a connectivity success story. They are also a story about what gets displaced when a society moves this much of its attention onto a screen this quickly.