Mary Meeker, the venture capitalist with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and famed former Wall Street securities analyst, today revealed her highly anticipated internet trends report for 2018.

The presentation slides were showed to the crowd at Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, and contain a lot of interesting analysis of where the world is and where it might be going.

The annual numbers-packed report is not so much a prediction of brand-new trends nobody has heard of, but the amount of data she provides provides everyone in the industry a solid signal of what’s coming next in technology. It’s a good bet the deck is currently on the screens of just about every computer and smartphone on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, California, the world center for venture capitalists.

There’s a lot to digest across the 294 slides, covering everything from the effect of the internet on jobs, transportation, healthcare, people’s social lives and privacy to China’s strength in the market. A few of the details:

Last year represents the first year that smartphone shipments plateaued and at the same time internet growth began to slow, rising only 7 percent in 2017, down from 12 percent growth in 2016. According to the report, more than half the world is already online, which leaves fewer people to connect.

This high proliferation of mobile devices and a large amount of internet connectivity, however, is driving a lot of changes to both in how people live their lives online and in the physical world, such as the kinds of transportation they use.

People are spending more time online than before, most adults spent 5.9 hours a day on digital media in 2017, up from 5.6 hours in 2016. Social media also saw a boost with 135 minutes on average per day spent in 2017, up from 90 minutes per day in 2012.

The way people buy and use cars is changing and on-demand ride-hailing services such as Uber Technologies Inc. are part of it. Average car lifespan has increased from eight years to 12 years and public transit usage is up 30 percent from 1995. Ride-hailing saw a doubling of bookings year over year in 2017.

Uber ride-hailing has shown that it provides a lower commute cost across four of the five largest cities in the U.S. In New York City, Chicago, Washington D.C. and Los Angeles, costs could be up to 30 percent lower. The exception is Dallas, where Uber commute costs were significantly higher at a difference of $65 per week for personal cars and $181 for Uber.

Healthcare spending for Americans is on the rise and is increasingly shifting to consumers paying a higher portion of premiums, 18 percent this year compared with 14 percent in 1999. Because of these costs, healthcare patients are increasingly developing expectations about having a modern retail experience, digital engagement with doctors and providers, on-demand access, transparent pricing and simple payments.

The way people work is also changing rapidly, thanks to the internet. Access to the internet has given rise to on-demand jobs, thus filling the needs of workers who want extra income and have flexibility in schedule and underutilized skills and assets.

At services such as Uber, drivers make $21 average hourly earnings with 17 hours a week and an average of 30 trips per week. Many Uber drivers are not professional drivers, with 72 percent having no previous experience, 80 percent having a job before Uber and 66 also holding another job. Many drivers were motivated by extra income, setting their own hours and maintaining a steady income.

All sharing services are on the rise, in fact, including Airbnb for short-stay on-demand housing and DoorDash, a service that delivers fast food orders from venues that don’t normally employ delivery drivers. High growth has also been seen in online marketplaces such as Etsy Inc., an e-commerce site for vintage items and unique crafted goods, and Upwork, formerly Elance-oDesk, a global freelancing platform. As of 2017, Upwork reported 14 million users across 180 countries and more than $1 billion in freelancer billings.

Data-gathering in enterprise and startups is accelerating as well, thanks to computer adoption and the proliferation of smartphones to consumers and sensors deployed with the “internet of things.” Sensors and data are being used in more places for visual navigation with Google Maps, shared transportation with Mobike, smart thermostats such as Nest’s, predictive maintenance for devices with Samara, and fitness tracking with Fitbit and Samsung Health.

Although data gathering is up, users have shown a love-hate relationship with data itself. Many online consumers share data for benefits, according to Deloitte 79 percent of people were willing to share data for “clear personal benefit” and 66 percent would share data with friends and family. However, data privacy concerns also came to the forefront, with 64 percent of users deleting and avoiding certain apps, 47 percent adjusting mobile privacy settings, 28 percent deleting cookies and 27 percent avoiding certain websites.

Not surprisingly, Chinese internet companies are booming, Meeker noted. The country currently serves as headquarters to nine of the world’s 20 top internet companies, compared with 11 in the U.S. Streaming media, mobile games, interactive game software, e-commerce and mobile payments saw significant increases in revenue since 2013.

Chinese TV networks and online video platform content budgets have come to parity in 2017 as well, at just above $6 billion, with online content budgets rising rapidly since 2014 – from approximately $1 billion — and TV content budgets dipping slightly in the same time frame.

Image: JD Lasica/Flickr