There’s nothing I love more than clear perspective on the big issues of life. (Well except maybe feta cheese. I do really love feta cheese. Don’t make me choose.) But anyway so when I read that The Population Reference Bureau had estimated that about 106 billion people have ever lived on Earth, that got me thinking.
Nearly one billion people are on Facebook, so about 1% of all humans ever has experienced Facebook. Yes I’m rounding up. But that’s pretty astounding.
Maybe you don’t think 1% is exciting? Well think about this- if you include all the Romans, the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Mayans, and all the cavemen… yes, all humans ever- what would they think of Facebook? How might it have changed their society? How will it change ours?
Forget that the Internet is only used by about 2 billion people worldwide (about 35% of the world uses the Internet in 2011) and has only been mainstream for about 15 years (when it was mainstream enough to be considered mainstream, you can debate yourself)… one particular website has been used by one out of 100 people who has ever lived? Consider that 11.4% of those currently living are active Facebook users. Do you think that might shape the future of humankind?
Even more interesting- globally, only 1.2 billion households have TV’s. The average U.S. household has 2.6 people. Central Africans have 5 and Iraqi’s have 7.7. Globally, it’s closer to 4. So if there are about 5 billion TV’s globally, Facebook is nearing 20% the reach of TV. Yes, within about five years a website is now 1/5th as popular as TV, which has been around for 91 years.