21st century

The 21st century is the current century in the Anno Domini or Common Era, in accordance with the Gregorian calendar. It began on January 1, 2001 and will end on December 31, 2100. It is the first century of the 3rd millennium.

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 interventions in Afghanistan, the United States-led coalition intervention in Iraq in the early 2000s, and 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.^[4] The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine became the largest conventional military offensive in Europe since World War II, resulting in a refugee crisis and disruptions to global trade. The United States has remained the sole global superpower while China is now considered an emerging superpower.

In 2022, 45% of the world's population lived in "some form of democracy", although only 8% lived in "full democracies."^[5] The United Nations estimates that by 2050, two thirds of the world's population will be urbanized.

The world economy expanded at high rates from $42 trillion in 2000 to $94 trillion in 2021, though many economies rose at greater levels, some gradually contracted.^[a] The European Union greatly expanded in the 21st century, adding 13 member states, but the United Kingdom withdrew. Most EU member states introduced a common currency, the Euro. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was also greatly expanded, adding 13 member states.

Effects of global warming and rising sea levels exacerbated the ecological crises, with eight islands disappearing between 2007 and 2014.^[6][7][8]

From January 2020 to May 2023, COVID-19 pandemic began to rapidly spread worldwide, killing over 20 million people around the globe,^[9] and causing severe global economic disruption, including the largest global recession since the Great Depression in 1930s and the Great Recession in 2008. COVID-19 vaccines were widely deployed in various countries beginning in December 2020. Widespread supply shortages, including food shortages, were caused by supply chain disruptions and panic buying. Reduced human activity led to an unprecedented temporary decrease in pollution. Educational institutions and public areas were partially or fully closed in many jurisdictions, and many events were cancelled or postponed during 2020 and 2021. Telework became much more common for white-collar workers as the pandemic evolved. Misinformation circulated through social media and mass media, and political tensions intensified. The pandemic raised issues of racial and geographic discrimination, health equity, and the balance between public health imperatives and individual rights. Treatments include novel antiviral drugs and symptom control.^[10]

Due to the sudden proliferation of internet-accessible mobile devices, such as smartphones becoming ubiquitous worldwide beginning in the early 2010s, more than half of the world's population obtained access to the Internet by 2018.^[11] After the success of the Human Genome Project, DNA sequencing services became available and affordable.^[12][13] There were significant improvements in the complexity of artificial intelligence, with American companies, universities, and research labs pioneering advances in the field.^[14] Generative AI-based applications such as ChatGPT and DALL-E have accumulated billions of users, and allow users to instantly generate complex texts, images, art, and video, comparable to the sophistication of human work.^[15] Other technological advances have also been made, impacting many, such as the widespread use of teleconferencing, online learning, streaming services, e-commerce and food delivery services to compensate for lockdowns ordered by governments around the world during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Recent social media applications on the Internet like Threads, BeReal, Clubhouse, BlueSky, Gettr, and Truth Social launched, and introduced recent types of social media, like audio-based and short-form content, further progressing in digital technology. Art forms, such as NFTs, also emerged as well. 5G networks have launched around the globe at the start of the decade as well, and became prevalent in smartphones. Research into outer space greatly accelerated in the 2020s, with the American mainly dominating space exploration, including the James Webb Space Telescope, Ingenuity helicopter, Lunar Gateway, and Artemis program from the United States.^[16][17]

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