One in six people on the planet use Facebook, posting six billion likes a day, sharing 400 billion photos, sending 7.8 trillion messages, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center. Most of those people visit Facebook daily.
What a cozy world. Sure, Facebook foments a lot of FOMO (fear of missing out), but it’s brought us all closer, yes? Pew reports that among adult Facebook users, the average number of friends is 338. I’m sure they’re all tight.
But, let’s give a nod to a bigger, better social network: sports. Sunday’s Super Bowl was the most watched television event in United States history, with 111.5 million viewers. Nine of the 10 most viewed programs last year were professional football games.
Arguably, those viewers are simply putting down one screen to focus on a bigger, high-definition one. Yet, there is a human connective power in sports that goes beyond the pixels.
I can hear it: sports are the opiate of the people, distracting us from our problems, diverting resources to silly diversions. Give it a rest. Sports are the great unifier, the only thing left that binds people who would never talk to one another, let alone spend time in the same room.
Nelson Mandela understood the power of a game. He didn’t care much for rugby, the sport of white Afrikaners. But he saw the improbable rise of the Springboks in the 1995 rugby World Cup as way to bring together his fractious, newly democratic country, a story told in the movie “Invictus.”
The Winter Olympics, just getting underway in Sochi, have the potential to form similar ties that bind within many nations. That assumes the Games can escape the real life omens of terrorism, and a host nation with a homophobic government.
Is there anything that’s passed between the billion-plus users on Facebook that brings all of them to tears, or prompts dancing in the street?
By Timothy Egan
edited from The New York Times
