I looked at the topic on the Internet. One of the graphs I saw showed the total number of people using the Internet since 1990, and it was incredible to see how steep of an incline some countries experienced. However, the author notes that there were other countries, particularly the poorest, that had not experienced much increase in Internet use at all, which I thought was interesting. It leads me to wonder what factors are involved. It could be due to low literacy rates, poor education, or, what I would think to be the most common reason, limited access to technology. It reminds me of Amartya Sen’s writing on development, and how there are multiple layers and interconnections between different freedoms that cause a person or population to have or not have other freedoms. By not using the Internet, I feel that a person is losing out on so many other opportunities that would greatly benefit their quality of life.
There was another graph of a world map that showed the number of internet users in 2017 by country, along with some statistics. The six countries with the most users were China, India, United States, Brazil, Japan, and Russia, in that order. I was surprised to find that India was second, despite only having 26 percent of their population on the Internet. The authors also mention how it’s estimated that around half of the world does not use the Internet, which to me sounds extremely shocking, since I live in an environment where the Internet has such an influential role in daily life. The authors also mention that there are 27,000 new users every hour, which I thought was very interesting.
The topic discusses the rise and impact of social media, and has a graph showing the amount of users for several social media apps and their growth from 2004 to 2018. Facebook and YouTube were by far the two most popular, with Facebook having 2.26 billion users and YouTube having 1.9 billion users. It surprised me to see just how big and influential Facebook is since I am surrounded by a generation that very rarely uses Facebook. The authors actually discuss this, where there are differences in the usage for each app based on age group. I was also surprised to see how popular WeChat is, which can be attributed to the fact that I live in the United States. While social media is typically used for entertainment, it can also be used to spread knowledge and information. There have been many concepts and movements that have been able to rise in popularity with the help of social media. One such example is the Black Lives Matter movement, which with the help of social media, has been able to gain tremendous support. Other examples include initiatives for wildlife conservation, climate change, gender equality, and more.