21st century
The rise of a global economy and Third World consumerism marked the beginning of the century, along with increased private enterprise and deepening concern over terrorism after the September 11 attacks in 2001.
[1][2][3] The NATO intervention in Afghanistan and the United States-led coalition intervention in Iraq in the early 2000s, as well as the overthrow of several regimes during the Arab Spring in the early 2010s, led to mixed outcomes in the Arab world, resulting in several civil wars and political instability.
[a] Effects of global warming and rising sea levels exacerbated the ecological crises, with eight islands disappearing between 2007 and 2014.
Due to the sudden proliferation of internet-accessible mobile devices, such as smartphones becoming ubiquitous worldwide beginning in the early 2010s, more than two-thirds of the world's population obtained access to the Internet by 2023.
[16][17] There were significant improvements in the complexity of artificial intelligence, with American companies, universities, and research labs pioneering advances in the field.
Academics have pointed out that the early years of previous centuries were commonly pronounced as, for example, "eighteen oh five" (for 1805) and "nineteen oh five" (for 1905).
The first genetically modified children were born November 2018 in China to significant controversy, beginning a new biological era for the human species.
However, suicide rates have fallen in Europe and most of the rest of the world so far this century, declining 29% globally between 2000 and 2018, despite rising 18% in the United States in the same period.
[27][28] The entire written works of humanity, from the beginning of recorded history to 2003, in all known languages, are estimated to amount to five exabytes of data.
[40] The Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal drew international attention to the possible adverse effects of social media in influencing citizen's views, particularly regarding the 2016 United States presidential election.
[44] Climate change remains a serious concern; UN Chief António Guterres, for instance, has described it as an "existential threat" to humanity.
[46] Economically and politically, the United States and Western Europe were dominant at the beginning of the century; by the 2010s, China became an emerging global superpower and, by some measures, the world's largest economy.
There is an ongoing impact of technological unemployment due to automation and computerization: the rate at which jobs are disappearing—due to machines replacing them—is expected to escalate.
[50] The World Economic Forum forecast that 65% of children entering primary school will end up in jobs or careers that currently do not yet exist.
[51] A rise in the retirement age has been called for in view of an increase in life expectancy and has been put in place in many jurisdictions.
The National Transitional Council of Libya replaced the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.
Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat and WeChat are all major examples of social media which have gained widespread popularity.
Other sports such as rugby, cricket, baseball, basketball, ice hockey, tennis, and golf are popular globally.
In cricket, the emergence of the Twenty20 format and the creation of the Indian Premier League led to changes in the nature of the sport.
The first major company to dominate the streaming service market was Netflix, which began as a DVD-delivery service in the late 1990s, transitioned into an online media streaming platform initially focused on delivering content produced by studios, then began to produce its own content, beginning with the popular and critically acclaimed series House of Cards in 2013.
