I wonder if internet so called virtual world how much is hiding truths, or is it hiding it at all. Let’s think.. who is placing information on internet? Who is trying to reach it? We do all, no one else. So if we post correct information we get the truth.

Let’s think about the meaning of ‘correct’ and ‘true’ here. In real life I see that many things which are ‘correct’ or ‘true’ for me does not the same for someone else or vice versa. ‘True’ or ‘correct’ here is relative. So those information on internet is ‘true’ or ‘correct’ for some of us, not all.

Let’s think about social media, Facebook decided to fight with fake news. Some people are sharing fake information on purpose, may be to change the people ideas on the subject and to move people to some other direction.

Media companies are using social media as a tool. There are many examples lately, some are doing great job, some are not. Some are after transmitting the news, some are after the numbers.

When I am thinking about myself, I built my environment at those social sites, no one else did. I have chosen to whom to connect to and whom to block. If I want to escape from the real world and from problems it is possible to do it at social sites.

I listened one of political leader other day, he was explaining about the changes the government wants to make at the Constitution. Some people are against those change some are not. He said that he was blocking people who are not against it and who are badly swearing to him, because he is against the changes. I am doing same time to time, I am not a political leader, I don’t need to embarrass or embrace all. Do you think telling same things over and over to same supporters will make any changes?

So we ourselves are shaping our environment on social sites and on internet. If I think I am not seeing the ‘true’ or ‘correct’ things, I take some actions, change the way of I post, change the people I connect. What will be your actions?

However, there are many useless posts and news around. It is interesting for me to see how even educated people are sharing those. Anyway, all are done for a reason. There are many reasons to connect, I sense the main reason is to profit from or to capitalize. I think these numbers are able to prove that:

By January 2017 according to Zephoria there are 1.86 billion monthly active users and 1.23 billion people are active daily on Facebook. Photo uploads 300 million per day.

On Facebook every 60 seconds there are 510,000 comments, 293,000 status updates, 136,000 photo uploads. And there are 5 new profiles every second (https://zephoria.com/top-15-valuable-facebook-statistics/)

There are 83 million fake accounts. If they are able to count fake accounts how come they don’t delete them? Most of the time wrong information comes out from those accounts.

On Google+ there are 375 million active users, total number of unique Google+ monthly visits is about 27 million, by September 2016 – (http://www.statisticbrain.com/google-plus-demographics-statistics/ )

On Google+ 1.5 billion photos uploaded each week(https://thenextweb.com/google/2013/10/29/two-years-later-google-growing-540m-active-users-worldwide-1-5b-photos-uploaded/)

I gave only two example of social sites, I keep wondering about how information technologies are keep going to manage all.

In conclusion I find many similarities between virtual and real world, we own selves are shaping our environment to profit from or to capitalize. I don’t think Internet hides anything, on contrary it mirrors us.

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I wrote this article on Feb 2017, now we are in Covid19 pandemic era. I call it era, because I still think it will take at least 10 years to get rid of it. Anyway this is another topic to write about it.

I wonder if is there any changes on statistics, this time I would like to look at numbers at some other sites.

According to Statista there are 3.97 billion internet users on the world, which is %51.4 of the world population. China has the biggest number of users, and the highest number of age group is 25-34. So people at my age – over 60 – are still away from internet. Broadbandsearch statistics shows us %64 of my age group – 50-65 yrs – are using internet.

When it comes to social media we face with 4.2 billion users, and most popular application for that still is Facebook, and YouTube follows it.

Search platform of Google is the most visited website worldwide with more than 66.5 billion monthly visits from global online audiences in December 2020. Google’s video platform YouTube.com is ranked second with 20.4 billion visits per month.

From January 2020 to June 2020 the growth rate of social media usage was %4.

These statistics shows us pandemic burst the internet usage, we are using social media applications more. To keep connected to the world from home social media platforms are tools.

I think education is also part of the usage. I was able to find statistics belongs before the pandemic. May be the next year we may get the numbers of 2020 and 2021 and then we can compare.. The illiteracy rate among all adults (over 15-year-old) in 2019 graph shows us  the percentage of the population ages 15 and older who can not read or write.

Hopefully, pandemic may cause more people to read and write. I believe reading and learning are changing our lives in a very good way.

April 2021 – Oya Şanlı

Last updated by oyasanli at April 11, 2021.