A year of tech in pandemic life, by the numbers

In the past year, we’ve spent a lot of time online. 

On March 13, 2020, the White House declared the COVID-19 pandemic a national emergency. Since then it’s been all video conference calls, FaceTime happy hours, virtual family gatherings, VR concerts, and endless screen time. 

It’s impossible to fully quantify how the pandemic has affected Americans’ relationship with tech, but we know we’ve downloaded tons of news apps, streamed obscene hours of Netflix, and attempted to de-stress with YouTube yoga.

Here’s our attempt to break down a very difficult and unusual year by the numbers. 

Boom or bust

During the pandemic, the businesses we relied on changed dramatically. That’s meant a boom for those that enabled and enhanced our remote lives, and a bust for brick-and-mortar spaces.

128: Percent increase in food delivery businesses that opened during the pandemic, according to Yelp.

61: Percent of 32,109 U.S. restaurant closures that are permanent, Yelp found in September.

4.2 million: DoorDash food delivery app downloads in April 2020 on iOS and Android devices in the U.S. — up from 2.6 million downloads in February 2020, based on Apptopia data.

369: Percent Zoom revenue increased at the start of 2021 from the year before, according to the company’s earnings data.

$483: The highest GameStop stock went when dying brands got a boost at the end of January 2021 thanks to pandemic boredom, as tracked by Macrotrends. A year before the boom, GameStop was trading around $4.

15: Percent of U.S. fitness clubs and workout studios that closed permanently as of November 2020, according to the International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association.

10: Percent of store payments in North America in 2020 made with mobile wallets, like Apple and Google Pay, the highest it’s ever been, according to fintech firm FIS Global.

Life from home 

Going to work or school often just meant signing in online.

90,000: Schools in 20 countries that use Zoom for virtual learning, as EdWeek reported.

81.1 million: Average number of monthly visits to online learning sites like Coursera and Khan Academy from March 2020 through the end of 2020 —a 43 percent increase from 2019, according to SimilarWeb data.

23: Companies (so far), including tech firms such as Facebook, Twitter, Salesforce, and Amazon, that told employees they could work remotely permanently, as compiled by job searching site FlexJobs.

3 billion: Number of packages delivered by Amazon, FedEx, USPS, and other shippers during the 2020 holiday season, according to ShipMatrix. Now we know what happens when you can’t shop for or deliver presents in person.

1 million: Average monthly searches for “DIY” from the start of pandemic closures through the end of 2020. At the beginning of lockdown (March – May 2020), it was even higher, with an average of 1.36 million searches, according to SimilarWeb data.

Hit the road

Public transportation and air travel was out, so we had to find more solitary ways to get away.

36: Percent of pandemic car buyers who bought a car for the first time ever, according to a Cars.com survey of 1,510 respondents in February 2021.

78: Percent of 300 U.S. adults surveyed earlier this year by research firm Lucid who said their travel plans were “adversely affected” in 2020.

50: Percent decrease in Google Maps worldwide traffic when lockdowns started in 2020, according to Google in September. 

44: Percent decline in trips to major U.S. city downtowns throughout 2020, according to transportation analytics firm INRIX.

$980 million: Money saved by drivers because of fewer cars on the road and therefore fewer hours sitting in traffic, based on INRIX traffic data for all of 2020. 

69: Percent less we spent on car services like Uber and Lyft throughout 2020 compared to the year before, according to ValuePenguin.

145: Percent increase in electric bicycle sales in 2020, according to research firm NPD Group.

3 million: New electric scooter riders on the Bird app since March 2020, as scooter rental company Bird reported this week.

Staying entertained

A year of no in-person socializing meant a year of streaming, streaming, and more streaming. 

6.1 billion: Hours of Netflix streamed every month by U.S. subscribers during quarantine, based on Nielsen/Kill the Cable Bill estimates.

6: New major streaming services launched during quarantine, including Documentary+, Discovery+, HBMO Max, Paramount+, Peacock, AMC+, and…Quibi. Hello, Quibi! Goodbye, Quibi.

100 million: Disney+ signups since its launch a few months before quarantine, according to a statement from the CEO.

3.3 million: New Yoga with Adrienne YouTube subscribers between March 12, 2020 and March 12, 2021. 

98 million: U.S. TikTok downloads since February 2020, according to data from app analytics firm Apptopia.

$1 billion: The valuation of invite-only voice chat app Clubhouse, according to a report from The Information. Maybe because venture capitalists are some of its most hyped users?

PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) production

Major manufacturers took a cue from war time efforts of yore and changed their operations to help fight the pandemic.

55 million: Number of masks Ford and the United Auto Workers union made as of early February 2021 after factories pivoted to pandemic products (along with 20 million face shields, 50,000 ventilators, 32,000 respirators, 1.4 million washable medical gowns), according to Ford.

1 million: Masks made in four weeks at General Motors factories, as GM reported last May.

5: High-tech masks debuted at the all-virtual 2021 CES. 

Time passed

365: Actual days spent in our new pandemic reality.

Unquantifiable: Perceived days of our new normal. Wait, it’s not still March 2020!?