Access Now: in 2022, 35 countries instituted internet shutdowns at least 187 times, led by India with 84 disruptions, Russia causing 22 in Ukraine, and more
More countries shut down the internet in 2022 than ever before, according to a new report by digital rights researchers …
Context & Ripple Effects
Access Now's 2022 tally extends an unbroken escalation the outlet has documented since monitoring began: from barely more than 50 shutdowns across governments in 2016, through India's 109 disruptions in 2020, to this report's record of 35 countries cutting access at least 187 times. The 2022 data also captures a wartime first for the dataset — Russia causing 22 disruptions inside Ukraine — pulling conflict-driven blackouts into what had been a mostly domestic-control phenomenon.
The trajectory did not bend after publication: Access Now went on to log 283 shutdowns across 39 countries in 2023, then 296 times across 54 countries in 2024, when Myanmar finally displaced India from the top spot for the first time since 2018. Each annual report has confirmed the prior one was no anomaly.
First-order effects
- India's 84 shutdowns in 2022 keep it the world's most frequent disruptor, meaning tens of millions of residents in affected regions face recurring loss of connectivity as a routine instrument of state control rather than an emergency measure.
Second-order effects
- Russia's 22 disruptions in Ukraine normalize shutdown tactics in interstate war, giving other governments a combat precedent to cite when justifying domestic blackouts.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — every year since 2016 setting or approaching a new high — internet access ceases to be treated as continuous infrastructure and becomes a revocable government lever, pushing digital-rights groups like Access Now toward permanent monitoring regimes and raising the stakes for international norms on connectivity.
The trend: State-imposed internet shutdowns have grown almost every year since 2016, spreading from domestic crowd-control tools in India and Myanmar to weapons of wartime disruption by Russia in Ukraine.