The European internet's oddest places

Many countries consider internet access numbers to be a good measure of how up-to-date their citizens and industry are, with higher penetration rates signalling good things. Dig down into the figures, though, and you can find some peculiar numbers that may or may not say more about their geography than plain old economics .

Thanks to Internet World Stats, here are some figures from 2011 that cast a slightly different and probably wildly erroneous light on what it is to be a European in modern times.

* Out of a population of 30,539 there are only 719 people in Monaco who are not on the internet. However, 120 percent of the population, 36,800, are on Facebook. Monaco is the only place on earth with a virtual population larger than its real one, and the only territory which knows how to connect to Facebook without using the internet. It may actually be fifty years in the future.

* Nobody knows how many of the 2019 inhabitants of the Svalbard & Jan Mayen Islands are online. Except, presumably, themselves — and they're not saying.

* Only 2.4 percent of the Vatican's 832 citizenry are on Facebook — His Holiness and 19 others.

* Less than one percent of Jersey's inhabitants are on Facebook — 820 out of 94,161 — and fewer than 50 percent are online.

* Guernsey and Alderney are the least friendly places in Europe with just 440 islanders Facebookers, 0.7 percent — but they like the internet more than Jersey does. 74 percent are online.

* Nearly everyone in Gibraltar who's online, 20,200 out of a total 28,956, is on Facebook. Only 1400 are on the internet but not friends with anyone.