We had a good run, humans, but it’s pretty clear at this point our demise is inevitable. According to the Chinese calendar, 2013 is the year of the snake, but it’s looks like it’s more likely to be the year of the robot. The United States officially has a larger population of Internet-connected devices than it has people, according to an NPD report shared by BetaBeat.
The U.S. has a population of around 315 million people, but a staggering 425 million devices connected to the Internet. This statistic likely makes us the most connected society in the world, or possibly anywhere else, aside from maybe some alien race that has advanced beyond the need for physical forms of communication. Only they could surpass our waning interest in actual face-to-face interaction.
Leading the way in the internet-connected revolution are, not surprisingly, desktops and laptops with 183.8 million units accessing the world wide web. Smartphones account for 133 million, and tablets trail gaming consoles (39 million) to come in fourth at 31.8 million. Aside from the increasingly easier access to internet options, even in rural areas, the growing prominence of portable devices has played a huge factor in the sizable increase in items accessing the internet.
No matter how you slice up the numbers, the majority of us probably have more than one device connected to the internet right now. If you’re fearful of the inevitable robot uprising that will occur because of this, fear not: The robots will likely get distracted trying to figure out why the Internet has more cat .gifs than useful information on it. We will strike as they ponder and process our collective ridiculousness.