First published on New Year's Day 2010: updated 10 Feb 2016, 28 Jan 2020. and 17 June 2026

#tenyearsago we thought the world as we knew it was going to end.

Y2K

Bugs coming from we knew not where were going to wipe out our computer systems, such as they were then. Panic was nigh amongst many.

For millions on the planet it was just another night in the passage of time. Another night of hunger, of war; the endless struggle of life.

How things change for as the second decade of the 21st century shows us its face we now find ourselves embracing computers and the virtual world they give us access to in a way that would have been impossible to comprehend a decade ago. Facebook, Twitter, Second Life, Bebo, YouTube, MySpace, Glide and so many more crowd in the internet, with more such sites appearing almost daily.

And let’s just stop and think about Twitter for a moment - something only birds did 10 years ago. Now we see the true power of platforms like this. Twitter is accessed by over a million people* around the globe. Events like the death of Neda, the young music student whose death was captured on a mobile phone, in a country that blocks Twitter; an unforgettable image that was SMS’d out, posted on Twitter and within hours the world knew.

Walls no longer exist in the global community. As Mitch Joel says, it is not 6 degrees of separation. We are separated only by tiny pixels.

There is a trending topic on Twitter today ... #tenyearsago. A truly fascinating insight into the mood of those of us privileged enough to have internet access that allows us to share our thoughts and reflections in 140 characters or less.

In following #tenyearsago over the course of today I am reminded of the reason why I decided to get my head around Twitter in the first place. I was starting work on a project in Azerbaijan and was wracking my brains for a way to get at least a small handle on the thoughts and feelings of the country. What about Twitter, I thought. And here I am now, 8 months on, getting a pretty extraordinary insight into the ponderings, feelings and memories of the world as it wakes up to 2010 (tweets not directly quoted):

#tenyearsago ...

...I was 4 yrs old, watching telly all day at nursery

...I was 8, now I’m a mother of a 2.5 year old boy

...I was naive and now I am not

...I discovered I was going to have a brother

...I was being abused and decided I need to change that

...some people I love were still around

...a Blackberry was still just a fruit

...my dot.com company was failing

...I made my biggest mistake - I got married

...I hadn’t met my wonderful husband

...I lived in happiness, now in India

...I was very innocent

...life was perfect - I miss kindergarten

...humans gave you money at the bank

...at 6 life was so much easier

...I was a little kid with no cares - miss those times

...I listened to music through Winamp2

...I was introduced to gang rivalry and bombings in college

...I wasn’t afraid of anything

...I was still a virgin

...I still climbed trees

...I began my fight for a greener world - still fighting

...my biggest thing was learning to ride a bike

...the world was a mystery, I still had dreams then I grew up

In amongst the reminders of how far we have come technologically in the past decade is the repeated emotion that is crystallised in this last tweet, of how much easier life was, of dreams dashed or not reached at all: Many of these sentiments are expressed by members of Gen Y.

Hindsight is always 20:20 and often viewed though rose-coloured glasses, this is true, but I am left wondering about how much the ‘instant fix’ mentality, driven in part by the virtual world, is responsible for this palpable lack of fulfilment. Or is it the awareness of how ‘the other half lives’ that can be gained through platforms like Twitter that causes a greater dissatisfaction with life as it is? Or is it more simply that Twitter gives an avenue for unfettered and honest expression that did not exist before?

I have written in the past that technology drives us apart as much as it brings us together. It does bring us together, of that there is no doubt but I can’t help feeling it is responsible, in part at least, for separating us from ourselves.

* 10 February 2016 update. - in the 6 years since this piece was written Twitter now has 320 million monthly active users, 80% of whom access the platform via their mobile phones. There are 1 billion unique visits monthly to sites with embedded Tweets. (Statistics http://bit.ly/1mjyzhm ). Facebook's active membership has grown from 360 million at the end of 2009 to 1.5 billion at the end of 2015. (Statistics http://bit.ly/1fiOA4J )

Technology continues to weave us together in ever-increasing numbers. Twitter & Facebook's phenomenal growth in such a short time is driven simply by the appetite for this means of communication. Yet in 2016 it is no longer just the youth of the day with their faces tilted down at screens at every possible moment; it is pretty much anyone with the means to have a smartphone and a sim card.

I still maintain that digital connectivity is an extraordinarily beneficial thing however the separateness I refer to above I feel is growing as is, I sense, our separateness from the world around us.

Call me old-fashioned but I believe we need to find a balance between our place in our immediate world and our place in our digital one otherwise I fear the sense of loss and longing expressed in the #tenyearsago tweets will continue to grow, robbing so many of the joy that is present in the present if we just take a moment to look up from our screens and feel it.

*28 January 2020 update - in the decade since this piece was written Twitter, as at May 2019, has 330 million active users a month and 500 million tweets being sent per day (https://bit.ly/2RZPbPq )

Facebook has an astounding 2.45 billion active users - 1 billion more than 5 years ago, with 1.62 billion logging on each day - a 9% increase year on year. (Sept 2019 https://bit.ly/38KJg7B). The combined population of India and China is only 350 million more than this. A staggering statistic.

Some say we are now living in the 'Instagram Generation'. When this piece was first written 10 years ago Instagram did not exist - it launched on October 6, 2000. It had one million registered users in two months, 10 million in a year, and 1 billion as of May 2019. In April 2012, Facebook acquired the service for approximately US$1 billion in cash and stock. ( https://bit.ly/37zn7cn ). It is so popular, and pervasive, that young people are now losing their lives posing for the perfect 'instapic.'

WhatsApp was released for iPhone several months before this piece was written. It is now ubiquitous with currently half a billion of us messaging with one another daily using its app. SnapChat did not exist at the advent of the last decade; now its has 210 million daily users with over half of them aged under 24yrs.

I could go on.

All this attachment to the screen, to social media; use ever-increasing at an exponential rate, impacting our health and wellbeing. With a decade of research we now know that social media use, for example, can negatively effect - self esteem, human connection, memory, sleep, attention span & mental health ( https://bit.ly/2RP7zKI ). Fear of missing out, sky-rocketing anxiety and increasing levels of social isolation are occurring across all generations of society, especially teens.

I give thanks daily for my access to the internet, for so many reasons and yet I am aware how it can increase my social isolation if I am not careful which in turn definitely impacts my mental health in ways that are not positive. And yet, with it I can conduct global business from my home office, stay in touch with friends around the world and access a wealth of information, as long as I can sift the fake from the real.

On New Year's Day this year I searched #tenyearsago and there wasn't much to read. The trending hashtag was #TenYearChallenge ... rather than reminiscing, tweets tagged thus were more about one-up-manship. The InstaGeneration has arrived in the Twitterverse. I couldn't bring myself to read them.

DQ is rising; EQ is falling. Is there no escape?

17 June 2026 update - There is no escape. EQ continues to fall; DQ may be rising still however the effects of social media on health and wellbeing are now very much to the fore. Science is now provong the very negative effect social media use can have on every aspect of health, on spoken and written communication, family and community structure and EQ. So much so, use by under 16s is being banned by governments (Australia in December 2025, and announced this week that a ban will come in in 2027 here in the UK). The benefit of this will only be seen over the next decade methinks.

The social media landscape has changed a lot since my last update. Some platforms no longer exist and others have been bought out. Some current statistics:

• Twitter: no longer exists, bought by Elon Musk in October 2022 for USD 44 billion. Yes, that's right, billion. The BBC stated at the time that the platform reported 229 million Monetizable Daily Active Users (mDAUs) in its last quarterly financial results as a public company. It was immediately rebranded as 'X' by Musk. Forbes reports that X, as of today, 4 years later, has approximately 238 million to 259 million mDAUs. The lack of growth could be said to speak volumes avbout its ownership and the lack of oversight on dis- and mis-information.

  
  

• Facebook: www.demandsage.com reports that Facebook continues to be in the top 3 most used social media platforms, with 3.07 billion monthly active users (MAUs) and 2.11 billion DAUs. Owned by Meta.

  
  

• Instagram: Statistica states that the platform has grown to approximately 2.99 billion monthly active users, an increase of almost 2 billion in 7 years. Owned by Meta.

  
  

• WhatsApp: is the world's most popular messaging platform, boasting over 3.3 billion MAUs globally. Users send over 100 billion messages and make over 100 million voice calls every single day, with about 2.3 billion people logging in daily. Astonishing growth since it launched 6 years ago. Owned by Meta.

• Snapchat: launched as Picaboo in July 2011 and rebranded as Snapchat in September that year, It is a multimedia instant messaging app known for its disappearing messages, AR lenses, and location-sharing. Globally, it has 483 million DAUs and 956 million MAUs, with users sending over 5 billion Snaps every day. India is its largest market, and under 24s are the single largest demographic. (Sprout Social)

• TikTok: launched as Douyin in China in 2016 with its parent company, Bytedance, launching the international version TikTok the following year. Launched as a platform for short form videos, TikTok it is now the leader in this video space. It was the 7th most downloaded app of the 2010s, and is one of the few competitors to Meta’s dominance in social media. It has been downloaded over 5 billion times. It has 1.9 billion MAUs globally & 1.1 billion DAUs. (Charle Agency).

• YouTube: viewers consume over 1 billion hours of video daily, a figure heavily driven by the popularity of YouTube Shorts which generate between 70 billion and 200 billion daily views.

  
  

• Top 20 social media platforms in the UK as of today, reported by YouGov, with YouTube being in the top slot : https://yougov.com/en-gb/ratings/social-networks

• Weibo: Started in 2009 as Sina Weibo and rebranded as Weibo in 2011. In 2025, as reported by ElectroIQ, Weibo had 588 million MAUs split pretty much equally across males and females, 261 DAUs and a bouce rate of just shy of 30%. It is much more than a social media platform and gains traction due to this and to the fact that its competitors are banned in China.

• GLOBAL SOCIAL MEDIA USE: According to Global Digital Insights:

  • Global social media use has reached supermajority status, with an estimated 5.79 billion user identities worldwide. This equates to approximately 70% of the total global population, with active users spending an average of 2 hours and 40 minutes scrolling every single day - that is 58, 400 minutes pa or ... 40.5 DAYS PER YEAR

  • High-Level StatisticsTotal User Count: 5.79 billion global identities

  • Internet Penetration: 94.7% of all active global internet users are on social media ... yes, that's right, 94.7%.

  • Platform Juggling: The average user actively visits 6.5 to 6.8 different social platforms each month

  • Year-Over-Year Growth: Increased by 294 million new users, averaging 9.3 new users every second. EVERY SECOND

  • Global Internet Adoption (from Statistica):

    • Global Internet Penetration: global user penetration sits near 73.8%. This equates to roughly 6 billion people worldwide. For context, WHO (the World Health Organisation) reported in August 2025 that 75% of the world's population have access to clean water, pretty much the same as have access to the internet.

    • Social Media Adoption: Active social media users account for 68.7% of the world's total population.

    • The Digital Divide: There is a stark contrast between high-income countries, which have a 94% internet penetration rate, and low-income countries, which average just 23%.

• Global creator revenue generated directly from social media platforms is forecast to reach $310 billion in 2026, up from $252 billion in 2025. This figure combines platform ad-revenue sharing, brand sponsorships, affiliate marketing, and direct fan contributions across all major social networks. For context, Macrotrends report that Amazon is the largest public company by revenue in the world. Over the 12-month period ending in March 2026, the company generated $742.77 billion. This follows the 2025 fiscal year, where Amazon posted a record $717 billion in annual net revenue.

I would never have thought when I last updated this page 6 years ago that we would have reached the stage where social media bans for Under 16s were being implemented by major governments. Many social media platforms are facing scrutiny of their oversight (or alleged lack thereof) of users leading to a plethora of underage users, an onslaught of mis/dis-information and claims of exploitation by users of the platforms stretching as far as human trafficking,

I miss Twitter of old, and I am grateful for the interactions I have on social media with friends near and far as I can go 2 to 3 weeks without a face to face conversation with someone who knows me (rather than a passing acquaintance I may say hello to when I am out). I guess it is like anything, in moderation social media is a good thing but when it becomes an addiction, when it is used to misinform, cause harm and interfere in democracy it is most certainly not.

#socialmedia #technology #togetherness