Apparently, folks in Los Angeles, thought so. In August of 2014 Facebook experienced an outage, which prompted multiple emergency calls to 911, which then prompted Sherriff Brink to tweet this:
Of course that sounds silly – but it points to a major shift that has occurred in who and how and how often we connect with others. Currently there are 1.35 billion active Facebook users which equates to 19% of the world’s total population. Keep in mind that Facebook just had its 11th birthday; it was founded on Feb. 4, 2004 – and that was a limited audience. It was not until 2 years later that it became open to those of us outside of college.
We see the shift everywhere. Currently over 42.3% of the entire world’s population is connected to the internet – which has grown from only 1% 20 years ago. In North America, the penetration is reaching 90%. In Africa, the growth is trending at 6,498%.
The volume is mind numbing – an average of 6000 tweets per second or 500 million per day. There are over 30 billion pieces of content shared on Facebook in the course of a month.
In addition to Facebook and Twitter, there are Instragram, Tumblr, Snapchat, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Google+ (just to name a few). Bottom line is that we are hyper-connected. And as a consequence we are tweeting, texting, posting, commenting, and liking – from any mobile device at our fingertips.
To me, it points to one of our deepest human needs – to connect and be connected. So whether you are ignoring this trend or obsessed with it, whether you loathe it or love it, it is here to stay. It will be ever- evolving, and how it looks today will not be the same as how it does in 2 years, let alone 20. It is growing exponentially, so it is not hard to imagine that within ten years a vast majority of the world will be connected via the internet is some way, making both visible and real the fact that we all truly interconnected.
This can, if we choose, be a defining moment for our world. We can chose to create a global community where we connect, listen and learn, share, collaborate, and deepen relationships across the globe. Or we can further polarize ourselves into smaller and smaller narrowly defined groups with pointed self-interests, highlighting differences, spewing hate, bullying, and attempting to rise one’s own power and status over others. That I believe, would be a true emergency – requiring much more than a 911 call.
How do you use social media? What do you see as the potential for this hyper-connectivity? What choices can we make to use this as a force for good?
