3.5 billion people are online
Figure 9.1: Number of people using social media platforms, 2005–2019 (Our World in Data). Today, of a global population of 7.7 billion people, a minimum of 3.5 billion people are online. According to Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, a senior researcher and head of operations at Our World in Data, “Social media has changed the world. The rapid and vast adoption of these technologies is changing how we find partners, how we access information from the news, and how we organize to demand political change.” Two-thirds of all internet users use social media, and as we can see in Figure 9.1, nearly a third of the world connects to at least one platform: Facebook. I get 90 percent of my news through social media and connect daily with new people. Every day I see viral posts going around that call out for a change.
Ortiz-Ospina, Esteban. “The Rise of Social Media.” Our World in Data. Last Modified, September 18, 2019. Accessed February 10, 2022.
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