Part one: COVID – 19 and it’s impact on social platforms

We can all agree on one thing that 2020 will not go down as a ‘good’ year, but for the digital world certainly, it was an interesting year.

COVID – 19 forced many people around the world to change their behaviors, this included many people to connect to the internet for the first time, while existing users have embraced new digital tools.

All these changes in behavior, have seen remarkable levels of growth over the past months in the digital industry.

Social media delivers some of the most impressive numbers, with users increasing by more than 13% since 2020 reports. In past year almost half a billion users joined social media in the past year, this increased the number of global users to 4.2 billion in early 2021. (Kemp, 2021)

Smartphones (mobile) users have seen growth as well, the world’s mobile users now spend more time on their phones rather than watching TV, which makes smartphone as today’s first screen.

eCommerce is another area that saw rapid growth in 2020, with many people moving their shopping online to mitigate the health risks associated with COVID-19.

New habits that people adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic will last well beyond the pandemic.

Let’s see key metrics in a snapshot what segments saw growth during 2020.

• The graph above shows the total population in the world which is 7.83 billion with 56.4% urbanization.
• Unique mobile phone users count 5.66 billion or 66.6% vs. population
• Internet users count 4.66 billion or 59.5% vs. population, and
• Active social medial users count 4.20 billion  or 53.6% vs. population