World Photograph Production Will Surpass Two Trillion for the First Time in 2025

Tha-tha-tha-that's a lot of pictures: A site called PhotoTutorial has published some estimates of how many photographs its writer thinks have been taken or will be taken this year. The site is light on sources, and I assume some sources might also have originated as broad estimates, so I assume that many of these numbers are very approximate at best. Keeping that in mind, they're still fun.

The total number of images projected to be taken this year is estimated to surpass two trillion for the first time. Guys like me like to keep their finger on the pulse of what's happening, but at more than 61,000 images per second, it's starting to make it difficult to keep up with all of them.

The percentage of images taken with smartphones has reached 94%, the highest ever. (Meanwhile, the AI technology for creating photo-like graphic images capable of fooling people is improving by leaps and bounds, raising the reasonable assumption that someday, a large majority of the trillions of photographs taken won't even be, um, photographs. So there's that to consider as well. By some estimates, 90% of all online content will be AI-generated by the end of 2026. At that point, it all becomes a loop of irrelevance.)

People with iPhones take more pictures than people with Android phones. 

One in three pictures taken by people who are between the ages of 18 and 24 are selfies. Why? They do it because it raises their anxiety, lowers their self-confidence, and makes them feel unattractive. As an article at Inc. explains.

The entire article is fun, but, again, take the actual numbers with not just a grain of salt—take with a whole deer lick of salt, would be my personal recommendation. 

Mike

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Featured Comments from:

Luke: "Re trillions of selfies, you can see where the term 'reverse selfie' comes from (i.e., aim the camera away from yourself.) Also handheld tripod (selfie stick), and lens filter (as opposed to electronic distortion). Then, there's 2D printing..."

Ronny Nilsen: "Re 'By some estimates, 90% of all online content will be AI-generated by the end of 2026. At that point, it all becomes a loop of irrelevance.' One of the best descriptions of where AI is taking us that I have read. AI can not be creative or create new content, it's just stochastic prediction of what to say/do next based on previous content and existing material."

Mike adds: At some point it will just be eating itself.

Ed Hawco: "At this point taking photographs is on par with writing words in terms of the pointlessness of counting them. How many trillion word are written every day, from grocery lists to scratching down phone messages to entering text into Google searches? I venture to guess that an awful lot of those trillions of photos are about as consequential as these word examples. Maybe we should mentally separate and dismiss those transient and inconsequential photos the same way we do with transient and inconsequential words.

"Maybe the only words and photos we should think about are the ones done deliberately and mindfully, such as love letters, blog posts, magazine articles (and shared selfies, portraits, travel and memory keepsakes, 'fine art,' etc.)."

Michael Newsom: "And many of those selfies and pictures of what I ate for dinner are posted on the Cloud and are a terrible waste of energy and computing resources."

Eric Rose: "We call that kind of estimate SWAG: Scientific Wild Assed Guess."

Comments

[Richard John Tugwell]

Ephemeral for the most part I'd guess. Or at any rate 100% bio-degradeable

[Gary]

Some hacker is going to find a way to reprogram smart phones so that when someone takes a selfie, it will alter the neurons in their brain to make them realize it's egotistical and stupid. The next challenge for the hacker will be to stop people from walking around taking phone videos of everything, especially at famous tourist sites. (Does anyone actually watch those videos later?)

[Tom Burke]

The Numbers thing: pretty much what I'd expected. One conclusion I draw from it is that taking photographs, and displaying them - on screen, online, or even printed - is very much a private activity. The days when taking photos was an unusual thing to do and that other people might be interested in seeing them, are gone.

The Selfie thing: initially surprising but actually not so once thought about. One thing might be interesting to learn: are selfies as common as they were in 2019 (the date of the referenced study)? Do we have any figures for the number of self-sticks sold in recent years? That might be reasonable proxy for the number of selfies.

[John Krumm]

One comment on AI. I was in a Zoom meeting the other day and no one wanted to take notes. Someone said, let's use the AI notetaker. We joked about our "evil AI notetaker" but later, when I read the transcript and nicely put together summary highlights, I was like, hmmm, that's actually useful (unlike the vast majority of "creative" AI slop I have seen).