The number of photographs taken this year is expected to exceed two trillion for the first time, according to research.
Photutorial reports that humanity will take approximately 2.1 trillion photos in 2025. In 2024, an estimated 1.9 trillion photos were taken.
Those head-spinning numbers mean that 5.3 billion photos are taken daily, or 61,400 per second. In the United States, the average American takes 20 photos every single day.
Smartphones Dominate
PetaPixel reported in 2023 that 92.5 percent of photos are now taken on smartphones. That number has now risen to 94 percent as of 2024, according to Photutorial.
There are 14.3 trillion photos in existence and 136 billion of them are indexed on Google Images. This massive amount of “free” data has enabled AI to thrive since the companies hoover it up and build their models. Although they no longer willingly reveal that information.
Every day on social media, 14 billion images are shared and sent to friends. WhatsApp see the most of any platform with a whopping 6.9 billion pictures exchanged every day. The staggering information was put together by Matic Broz, a photographer himself, for Photutorial.
“The number of photos taken increases by 6% to 8% every year as camera technology becomes more accessible and affordable, both in smartphones and cameras,” Broz explains. The only exception is around 2020 when lockdowns and travel restrictions led to a rare downturn in photos being taken.
“If you take a photo every second, it will take almost a day to match the number of photos people take in one second. To match the total number of photos taken globally in a year, it would take over 61,000 years,” adds Photutorial.
162 billion photos are taken every month.
That’s 5.3 billion photos per day.
Or 221 million photos per hour.
3.7 million photos per minute.
61,400 photos per second.
The research points out that the very first photo in the world, which PetaPixel happened to report on yesterday, was taken in 1826 and for the next 175 years photographs remained relatively scarce until smartphones were equipped with digital cameras.
The amount of photos taken varies by region; while U.S. citizens take an average of 20.2 photos per day, Europeans only take an average of 4.9 photos per day, according to the research.
The average smartphone user has roughly 2,000 photos stored on their device. But Apple users have slightly more with 2,400 photos compared to Android users who have 1,900 photos. Head to Photutorial for more photographic analysis.
Image credits: Header photo licensed via Depositphotos.
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