The pioneers of the Internet were fired up by its ability to abolish distance and time. Even back in the dial-up days of the 1990s, it was possible to connect quickly with people anywhere on the planet—New York, London, Moscow, Cape Town, Mumbai, Singapore, Sydney—anywhere with an Internet service provider. The media headlines carried news of strangers connecting from far-flung places. Now that hundreds of millions of people have always-on broadband and wireless services, the promise of anywhere-anytime has been fulfilled; all those world-spanning connections can be instant. And unlike in the pre-Internet snail-mail days of pen pals, today’s international Internet friends can connect instantly with chat messaging, VoIP calls and live video chats.

SoMe keeps millennials in constant contact. Unlike in days of landline phones and snail mail, SoMe connects people instantly and constantly via message posts, chat messaging, VoIP calls and live video chats. In our survey, we asked respondents to rate their agreement with the statement “One of the main ways I stay connected with friends is through social network sites.”Well over half the millennial sample (56 percent) agreed, with fully one-fifth (20 percent) agreeing strongly and only 18 percent disagreeing.

Most of the big social media services started in the United States, and American millennials are no laggards in using SoMe as a mainstay for connecting with friends (63 percent do so), but they’re not the exception. Large percentages in the other countries also agreed with the statement, including a massive 70 percent of millennials in India.

The appeal lies not so much in connecting with strangers in far-flung places as with staying in touch with family and friends. SoMe is new tool for satisfying very basic human needs: connection, conversation, community.

A Global Community