As of February, 2025, there were more than 5.5 billion internet users globally, which is nearly 68% of the entire population. Close to 64% were reportedly not only internet but social media users, too, which means that whether they remember their life pre-social media or not, scrolling is something they’re likely familiar with now.
If you’re wondering what country is home to the most internet users, Statista reveals that with more than a billion users, China is the leading country on the list. It is followed by India and the United States, with 806 million and 322 million internet users, respectively.
While the reasons for spending time on the internet are ample, some are more common than others. As of the beginning of this year, the most common was finding information, with close to 63% of people going online with this particular purpose, according to the Digital 2025 Global Overview Report.
During the recent Covid period, another common reason to log online was staying in touch with friends and family. Nowadays, that remains an important one as roughly six-in-ten people reportedly use the internet for just that.
According to the aforementioned source, adult internet users nowadays spend an average of 6 hours and 38 minutes online every day.
Bearing in mind how much and how often we use the internet and social media, it’s no surprise that they have influenced our habits, activities, and even the way we talk. Discussing the latter, linguist Adam Aleksic, known to his online following as the Etymology Nerd, noted that we are entering an entirely new era of language change, driven by social media algorithms.
In his TEDx Talk, the Etymology Nerd pointed out that, in addition to prompting the emergence of new words created to avoid algorithmic censorship (such as the verb to unalive, for example), social media plays a significant role in regards to where words come from, how words become popular, and how quickly those words spread.
Delving deeper into social media algorithms and how they tend to influence the way we talk, the Etymology Nerd, Adam Aleksic, noted that such algorithms reward repetition. If a song—or a meme, or a word, for that matter—is catchy and people interact with it, the algorithm will then push it to more people, as it drives engagement on the platform.
Using trending memes and words to make online content perform better, people—social media influencers, for instance—contirbute to the spread of a certain kind of slang or popular phrases, too, and soon enough, they start spreading like wildfire.
Talking about how trending words influence different groups of people, Aleksic compared language to a virus. “Words are transmitted from one host to another, reproducing and changing as they infect different people along social networks,” he said, painting a vivid picture. “But now, the literally viral nature of social media is accelerating this process from start to finish. In a span of just a year, a word like rizz can go from complete obscurity to becoming the Oxford English dictionary Word Of The Year.”
If you have no clue what rizz means, according to said dictionary, it is a colloquial noun, defined as “style, charm, or attractiveness; the ability to attract a romantic or sexual partner.”
If you find it difficult to keep up with all sorts of trending words and bizarre phrases (like yours truly), you might be fearful of using them incorrectly. As a matter of fact, many people do. To make matters worse, some of them use words that are actually pretty offensive without even knowing it. According to a survey from 2022, more than one-in-three Gen Zers have used a slang word they later learned was offensive.
According to the aforementioned survey, the most popular slang word in 2022 was ghosted, followed by salty. These were the two words that remained on the very top of the list for at least two years in a row. But seeing just how quickly new words are introduced on social media, and consequently into our lives, it’s safe to assume that as we scroll through internet posts in the future, we might have to do some digging to understand exactly what they say. Luckily, this list wasn’t yet full of phrases calling for a Google search.