The 2020s began with the COVID-19 pandemic. The first reports of the virus were published on December 31, 2019, though the first cases are said to have appeared nearly a month earlier.[3] The pandemic led to a global economic recession, a sustained rise in global inflation for the first time since the 1970s, and a global supply chain crisis.
Several anti-government demonstrations and revolts occurred in the late 2010s and early 2020s, including a continuation of those in Hong Kong against extradition legislation; protests against certain local, state and national responses to the COVID-19 pandemic; others around the world, particularly in the United States, against racism and police brutality; one in India against agriculture and farming acts; one in Israel against judicial reforms; another in Indonesia against the omnibus law on jobs; ongoing protests and strikes in France against pension reform; an ongoing political crisis in Peru, Armenia, and Thailand; and many in Belarus, Eswatini, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Iran, China, and Russia against various forms of governmental jurisdiction, corruption and authoritarianism; along with citizen riots in the United States and Brazil in an attempt to overturn election results. The world population grew to over 8 billion people, and in 2023, India overtook China as the most populous country in the world.[4][5]
Ongoing military conflicts include the Myanmar civil war, the Ethiopian civil conflict, the Kivu conflict, the Mali War, the Yemeni civil war, the Somali Civil War, the Syrian civil war, the Russo-Ukrainian War, and the Israel–Hamas war. The Russian invasion of Ukraine became the largest conventional military offensive in Europe since World War II, and resulting in a refugee crisis, disruptions to global trade, and an exacerbation of economic inflation. In 2023, a Hamas-led attack marked the first invasion of Israel since 1948, triggering a swift Israeli response with an invasion into Gaza. This conflict has led to the displacement of nearly all 2.3 million Gaza residents, raising international concerns about a humanitarian crisis and sparking global protests against Israel's actions in the war. Smaller conflicts include the insurgency in the Maghreb, the Iraq insurgency, the Philippine drug war, and the Mexican drug war. The year 2021 saw the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, ending twenty years of war in that country, and leading to the republican loyalist uprising against the new emirate government.
With many extreme weather events magnifying in the early 2020s, several world leaders have called it the "decisive decade" for climate action as ecological crises continue to escalate.[6][7] In February 2023, a series of powerful earthquakes killed up to 62,000 people in Turkey and Syria; this event fell within the top five deadliest earthquakes of the 21st century.
There were significant improvements in the complexity of artificial intelligence, with American companies, universities, and research labs pioneering advances in the field.[8] 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.[9] 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. 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 United States mainly dominating space exploration, including the James Webb Space Telescope, Ingenuity helicopter, Lunar Gateway, and Artemis program from the United States.[10][11]
Development in global goals and issues – including goals or progress related to the largest causes of human death – during the decade, according to reports that systematically track, quantify or review associated progress.
The ninth generation of video game consoles, like PlayStation 5 (pictured) and Xbox Series X, were both released in 2020. Games for PlayStation 5 such as FC 24 and The Matrix Awakens used HyperMotion V and Unreal Engine 5 to display more realistic graphics. Grand Theft Auto VI will release for ninth generation consoles in 2025.
Decorative face masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19 was common in the early 2020s; vaccination status of individuals also became culturally relevant during the decade. Pictured is a mask based on the game Animal Crossing: New Horizons, a popular video game during the pandemic. The Social impact of the COVID-19 pandemic was seen during the 2020s.
The video-sharing site TikTok became a major influence on pop culture and the music industry in the early 2020s. Short-form videos increased in viewership through TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts during the decade.
During COVID-19 and the streaming wars, multiple TV shows and films released on internet streaming services instead of theaters. Squid Game was a global success as a result of the streaming wars that began in the early 2020s, involving many new streaming services. Services such as Apple TV+, Max, and Paramount+ were popular. Pictured above is the cast of Apple TV+'s Ted Lasso.
Flashy multi-colored clothing became a trend in the early 2020s, as did baggier clothing such as hoodies, modeled here by musician Billie Eilish. The 2020s revived and built upon Y2K fashion trends.
In the 2020s, multiple online food delivery services such as Uber Eats, Postmates, DoorDash and Grubhub became popular, becoming popular during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Food delivery robots also became popular in the 2020s, and were finally to the point they could be used to deliver food around larger areas such as college campuses.
Canadian singer The Weeknd was the first artist of the decade to achieve a Billboard number-one single of the year (for the year 2020) with his hit single "Blinding Lights", which was also performed during the Super Bowl LV in 2021.
Olivia Rodrigo released singles like "Deja Vu" and "Good 4 U", and her debut studio album, Sour, in 2021. Sour was met with critical and commercial success, winning various accolades including three Grammy Awards.
The use of cryptocurrency became more mainstream in the 2020s, Crypto such as Bitcoin and others were notable. The Staples Center was even renamed Crypto.com Arena in 2021. NFTs as a form of digital art emerged in the 2020s, with NFTs such as Everydays: the First 5000 Days.
5G was introduced in smartphones during the early part of the decade, with the Samsung Galaxy Flip and iPhone 13 smartphones having 5G capabilities. Foldable smartphones also became more popular, although concern grew about the durability of foldable smartphones, as some foldable smartphones have became crinkled / will crease over time. As well, some foldable smartphones break more easily.
Advancements in AI have been rapid and fast-paced in the 2020s. Generative AI has become mainstream during the decade, with synthetic media in the form of Text-to-image models, ChatGPT, and Audio deepfakes. AI techniques have now been used in music, including the Beatles' last song "Now and Then" (2023). Additionally, AI has been used for video creation, such as with Sora.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution in the 2020s is referred to as industrial change with emerging technologies such as AI, gene editing, and advanced robotics that blur the lines between the physical, digital, and biological worlds. Automation also continues to take over human jobs. Above is a photo of a Tesla Bot, which Tesla, Inc. hopes to begin selling by 2027.
Clubhouse, an app that is launched in 2020, have gained popularity in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic and had 600,000 registered users by December 2020. Main thing is that users can communicate in audio chat rooms that accommodate groups of thousands of people.
Renewable energy sources such as electric vehicles as well as solar and wind powered devices to combat global warming became popular during the 2020s. Scooter-sharing systems have become common in the street scene of the 2020s (especially in downtown areas), with Lime becoming popular.
The early 2020s started with a rise in videoconferencing due to the pandemic, while many educational institutions and workplaces shifted to distance learning and remote work during and after the pandemic. Large-scale video conferencing became a reality and more common during the 2020s.
Summer Olympic Games of the 2020s include Paris in 2024 and Los Angeles in 2028, as well as Tokyo 2020 in 2021 (the first ever Olympic games to be delayed, taking place in 2021 instead of 2020). Winter Olympics of the decade included the controversial 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, as well as the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy.
The 2020s was a more profitable era for movies based on video games. The Super Mario Bros. Movie released in 2023 and surpassed $1 billion, and Nintendo plans to open a group of international theme parks called Super Nintendo World and a Nintendo Museum between 2021 and 2025.
Apple Vision Pro, which was released in 2024, marks an advancement in spatial computing and mixed reality headsets. The device intends to merge physical and digital environments, overlaying computer graphics on each individual user's real world environments.
During the 2020s, the idea of brain implants existed in an early, limited form. The company Neuralink and a research group demonstrated the ability for a monkey to move a computer cursor with neural signals, typing coherent sentences.
Cloud computing has surged in popularity following and during the global pandemic of 2020. Cloud computing allows for data to be stored in data centers and looked up on any device, rather than the photos, notes, etc. of a device being restricted to just that device.
The Sustainable Development Goals promotes seventeen interlinked objectives designed to serve as a "shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future". Pictured above is a diagram listing the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, which are intended to be completed by the end of the 2020s.
The 2020s saw the use of Corporate Memphis, a design style in company branding that has been criticized as minimalist, uninspired, and dystopian. Companies such as Pepsi, Reddit, and Nickelodeon have changed their logo in 2023, going against the Corporate Memphis style and opting for more of a lighter and extensive look.
The race to create quantum computers has amped up in the 2020s. Companies such as IBM and Google are working on quantum computers, wanting practical usage of these technologies to be ready by the end of the 2020s and/or the 2030s.
Social media rebranding occurred during the 2020s, with Facebook, Inc. changing its name to Meta Platforms, and Twitter changing its name to X (though most people continue to call it Twitter). As well, new social applications like Threads launched.
