I, Sam, have been an avid Facebooker for nearly seven years now. My sister urged me to join as an eighth grader, which I did to please her, all the while thinking that MySpace was far superior. Facebook was so plain, and sparse. In fact, I was the second or third person in my high school's network. Today there are nearly a thousand, and those are only the ones who have declared themselves members of my alma mater.
In the past few months I have had more adults than I can remember asking me how to work their Facebook pages. Whether they're beginners who don't understand the difference between wall posts and messages, or advanced users who want help to hone their skills; they all seem to assume that a college aged student is their best bet when it comes to asking advice. Now, it was the sheer number of baby boomers asking for Facebook advice that led me to wonder this: how much of the world's population is involved in this "social network"? So I did some reasearch.
Number of people in the world: 6,775,235,700
Number of people in the world with internet access: 2,095,006,005
Number of people on Facebook: Approximately 600,000,000
Now, those are some pretty large numbers. My first question was "what percentage of the world is connected through Facebook?" Well, that would be 8.85%. That may not seem like an overly large number, but I want you to really think about it. Hard. Approximately 9% of the world's population has a Facebook account. Nine percent. That may not sound huge, but nearly one tenth of the world is connected via Facebook.
After letting this fact sink in for awhile, I realized that my 9% was a silly figure. I mean, it's not like kids living in mud huts have access to the internet. So I decided to narrow the range a little. I looked up how many people have access to the internet. Two billion, ninety-five million, six thousand and five people have access to the internet. 2,095,006,005. That's 30.92%. Nearly a third of the world has internet access. Considering the age of the internet, and the fact that a decent number of the world's population lives in poverty (Just because the Chinese can pump out plastic McDonald Toys faster than you can say "Happy Meal with a Coke" doesn't mean all their people are rolling in dough...) I find this 30.92% outstanding. Go technology! Seriously.
With my new knowledge of the world's internet access, I went off and did some more calculating and I was more than a little intruiged. 28.63%. That's the percentage of Facebook users of the people with access to the internet. Over a quarter of all internet users are social networkers.
In middle school and high school, my generation though MySpace was big. We had millions of members. But now, Facebook has not only taken over the internet lives of high schoolers and college kids around the country...Oh no. Facebook is conquering the world. Hats off to you, Mr. Zuckerburg.
Tis rather mind numbing, isn't it? 30% of the world is on the internet. 8% of the world is on Facebook. If these numbers don't shock you, you either don't have a good grip on numbers, or you're a Generation WTF member who's too young to remember Legends of the Hidden Temple and the glorious days of boy bands. In which case, please stop reading my blog, as you are making me feel ancient.
With that bit of knowledge released into the Cyberworld, I am off to study, work, and perhaps even Facebook. Along with 600 million of my closest friends and family.
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook
http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1SKPL_enUS412US412&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=population+of+the+world
http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
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