10 Year Challenge: How the world has changed in a decade (2023)

If you've been pretty much everywhere on the internet in the last few weeks, you'll no doubt come across the #10YearChallenge on social media.

If not, the premise is simple: Post a photo of yourself from 2009 next to your most recent one to show how much you've changed.

Millions attended, but some criticized it for narcissism, aging, and sometimes a little sexism, among other things.

But now people are using the hashtag to reflect on bigger changes. As...

In this tweet, soccer player Mesut Ozil compares what appears to be a large iceberg on the left and a melted iceberg on the right.

Although the meme is not entirely accurate - the photo on the left, fromGetz Ice Shelfin Antarctica it was taken in November 2016, not 2008; it cannot be denied that shrinking ice sheets remain a serious problem.

AccordingNASA, Antarctica loses about 127 gigatons of ice mass per year, while Greenland loses 286 gigatons per year.

They say this is due in large part to rising global temperatures that are being absorbed by the oceans. The planet's average surface temperature has risen by about 0.9 degrees Celsius since the late 19th century, about a third of which has occurred in the last decade.

Environmental advocacy groups also use the hashtag to highlight this issue.

This Greenpeace post slightly overcomes the challenge by comparing archival photos from 1928 with photos taken by Swedish photographer Christian Aslund in 2002.

And Martin Kobler, the German ambassador to Pakistan, tweeted an article about climate change in the Balochistan region of Pakistan.

according to the latestGlobal Climate Risk IndexPakistan was the eighth country most affected by climate change in the last two decades.

2018 was the year the world really realized the reality of plastic pollution and climate change.

Scientists estimate that approximately10 million tons of plastic wasteend up in the oceans every year, and that some of them can take hundreds of years to biodegrade.

That's why some activists are turning the #10YearChallenge upside down to show that while we may have changed a lot in the last decade, the plastic we throw away remains pretty much the same.

On December 17, 2010, Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi refused to pay a bribe to local officials and his fruit and vegetable cart was confiscated. Faced with a ruthless bureaucratic process,catch fire.

This act, less than 10 years ago, was the catalyst for what was later dubbed the Arab Spring: a wave of protests in the Middle East and North Africa, in some cases leading to bloody civil wars and a refugee crisis. thatrecord number of peopleforced to leave their homes.

To reflect on this, then-and-now photos of the conflicts in Syria, Libya and Iraq were posted on Twitter, with prosperous street scenes contrasted with stark images of dilapidated buildings.

People also share some things that seem to have improved over the past decade.

But unfortunately it doesn't show the full picture.

While extreme poverty is at the lowest level in the world, it continues to rise sharply in sub-Saharan Africa, where the average extreme poverty rate is now around 41%.

And while youth literacy has increased overall, it is still lower in less developed countries and affects young women more often than men. According to the latest data, 59% of all illiterate youth are girls.

While environmental damage is still a huge problem, there is no doubt that awareness of the problem has increased, leading many people and countries to try to switch to sustainable energy sources.

The International Energy Agency says that renewable energyincreased in 2016, thanks in large part to the boom in solar panel installation in China.