Culture

Here's Everything That Happens in One Minute on the Internet

The internet gets a lot done in just 60 seconds.

by Monica Hunter-Hart
Twitter users @LoriLewis and @OfficiallyChadd and the All Access Music Group/Cumulus Media

Surfing the internet typically feels like a solitary activity. But even if we feel alone when we’re online, we aren’t. There are often thousands — if not millions — of people doing the exact same activity that we are, whether it’s scrolling through Facebook, sending a message, or zoning out on Netflix.

Cumulus Media put together a graph that shows exactly how much activity occurs online in a single minute, and the statistics are staggering.

The biggest number on the chart chronicles the number of emails sent every minute (156 million) followed by the number of texts sent (16 million). That makes sense, since these are by far the most common means of communication in places that have regular internet access. Whatsapp would probably be up there, too, but it’s not included on the graph.

The Snapchat vs. Instagram battle rages on, and Snapchat is victorious here with 1.8 million snaps sent a minute to Instagram’s 46,200 posts. Of course, an Instagram post typically involves more stylizing and doctoring than a snap, so creating one takes longer.

One internet minute

Twitter users @LoriLewis and @OfficiallyChadd and the All Access Music Group/Cumulus Media

Cumulus Media’s Lori Lewis designed the chart and said that the data is global, except for the online spending and voice-first devices statistics. “It’s all from quarterly earnings reports, on actual platform websites or consumer spending reports,” she wrote on Twitter.

Next time you look something up on Google, pause, and relish in the immense online community of which you’re a part: 70,016 people are doing the exact same thing at that moment.

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