Social media diffused far faster than any earlier major technology

Evidence

But now look closely at the diffusion curve for social media. The gradient is incredibly steep by comparison. In fact, the rate of adoption is nothing like we’ve ever seen before. Social media use increased from covering about 5 per cent of the US population in 2005 to a whopping 79 per cent in 2019. The largest social media platform is Facebook, which covered only 1.5 per cent of the world’s population in 2008, but now has over 35 per cent of the world’s population active on its platform. — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 378

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Digital technologies reach three billion people and now mediate nearly all social life — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 22; Speed of communication rose by up to ten billion in two centuries — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 251

Broader Connections

• Digital technologies reach three billion people and now mediate nearly all social life #expands (0.78) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 22