In the last two years alone, 90 percent of the world’s data has been generated. This is really worth reading again! While it’s nearly impossible to fathom, I’ve compiled a list of some of my favourite statistics to help explain a few of the ways we generate such colossal amounts of data on a daily basis.

Internet

With so much information at our fingertips, every time we use search engines like Google or bing to find answers, we add to the data storehouse.

Over 3.7 billion people around the world use the internet (a 7.5 percent increase over 2016).

Google alone processes more than 40,000 searches over all devices every second!

While Google accounts for 77% of all searches, it is essential to note that other search engines also contribute to our daily data generation. Every day, 5 billion searches are conducted around the world on search engines other than google.

Social Media

Our current obsession with social media undoubtedly fuels data generation. These are the numbers generated every minute of the day, according to Domo’s Data Never Sleeps 5.0 report:

• 527,760 snaps are shared by Snapchat users.
• More than 120 professionals have joined LinkedIn, and users have viewed 4,146,600 YouTube videos.
• Twitter users send 456,000 tweets
• Instagram users share 46,740 pictures

With more than 2 billion active users Facebook is still the most popular social media network. Let that sink in for a moment: Facebook is used by more than a quarter of the world’s 7 billion population! Here are some more fascinating Facebook stats:

• Every day, 1.5 billion individuals use Facebook.
• Facebook has over 307 million users across Europe.
• Every second, five new Facebook profiles are created!
• Every day, around 300 million photos are uploaded.

Communication

When we utilise our favourite communication techniques today, from texting to emailing, we leave a data trail. Here are some astounding statistics about the amount of communication we send out per minute:

• We send out 16 million text messages each year.
• There have been 990,000 Tinder swipes.
• 156 million emails are sent each day; by 2019, it is predicted that there will be 2.9 billion email subscribers worldwide.
• Facebook Messenger receives 15,000 GIFs.
• Every minute, 103,447,520 spam emails are sent.
• There are 154,200 calls on skype.

Digital Photographs

Now that our smartphones have incredible cameras, everyone is a photographer, as evident by the trillions of captured images. Because there are no signs of a slowdown, expect these digital photo figures to rise further

• By the end of 2017, people will have taken 1.2 trillion photographs.
• A total of 4.7 trillion photographs will be kept.

Services

In our new platform-driven economy, there are some extremely intriguing figures coming from businesses and service providers. Here are a few numbers that peaked my interest that are generated every minute:

• The Weather Channel receives 18,055,556 requests for forecasts.
• Venmo handles $51,892 in peer-to-peer transfers.
• Spotify has added 13 new tracks.
• 45,788 journeys are taken by Uber users!
• Wikipedia has 600 new page modifications.

Internet of Things

The Internet of Things, a network of connected “smart” gadgets that interact with each other and us while collecting various types of data, is increasing (from 2 billion devices in 2006 to a projected 200 billion by 2020) and is one of the primary contributors of our data vaults exploding.

Let’s look at some numbers and predictions for just one sort of device, voice search:

• There are 33 million voice-first gadgets on the market.
• Every month, 8 million people utilise voice control.
• Google voice search requests increased 35 times since 2008.

Meanwhile, as more of our world is digitised and ‘datafied,’ these already mind-boggling statistics are multiplying at an ever-increasing rate.