Читать книгу Closer Together, Further Apart: The Effect of Technology and the Internet on Parenting, Work, and Relationships - Jennifer Schneider - Страница 11

At the time of this writing, there are well over two billion Internet users worldwide. Asia leads the way with over one billion users and North America has more than 273 million—over three-quarters of our population. The least technologically developed continent, Africa, has just shy of 140 million users, which is only about 13 percent of that continent’s population, but the number of African users has increased nearly 3,000 percent in the first twelve years of the twenty-first century. Nearly one-third of the world’s population is online.⁷ And that number increases every single moment. To call the Internet a ubiquitous worldwide phenomenon would be a vast understatement. Essentially, we live in a new “golden age” of information and communication. We are interconnected in ways that were undreamed of a mere decade ago. In technologically advanced nations today virtually anyone, no matter where he or she is, can immediately connect with almost any other person.

Digital technology—primarily the Internet but also cell phones, cable TV, and other innovations—has, in less than a single generation, dramatically and permanently altered the ways in which humans connect and communicate on our little green and blue planet. Conversations and information transfers that once either weren’t possible or took days to complete now occur in an instant. Both the pace and breadth of human interactions have infinitely increased.