BY: SAMANTHA TAPP
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, WhatsApp and Tumblr. No, I’m not listing every social media outlet we have available to us, I just listed all the social media outlets that I personally use. Writing them out kind of makes me think I have an addiction, and I’m sure my family and friends would quickly agree.
However, it’s not just me. Look around you and you’ll see social media everywhere. Every company’s promotions seem to be more effective on Facebook than on television commercials; at every job interview you go to, your potential employer has not only seen your LinkedIn, but they’ve also read all of your tweets; and much to my amusement, every parent and grandparent seems to be on Instagram these days.
2016 is the year of the selfie; it’s the year social media took over; hell, it’s the year that YOLO was added to the dictionary. Global Media Insight reported upon the status of social media usage worldwide in 2016. They rounded up the most popular sites, how many users were active on them, where the users were from, and what gender the users are. All together in 2016 there were 5.514 billion social media users. Keep in mind that it may not be 5.514 billion different people, because if you’re like me, you’re on multiple sites. Regardless, there were over 5 billion active accounts on social media this year; compare that to the fact that there are just under 7.5 billion people on Earth.
