By: Jon Sham

Years from now, when people look back at Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg, I think naming him Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year” will seem like an understated honor.

Often when my eyes glaze over my Facebook news feed, I think about how many people are active users. As of the end of this year, more than about one out of every 12 people on the planet use the social network (about 550 million users out of the world’s approximate 6.8 billion). When you factor in that the world population includes those too young or too old to use Facebook, and millions of others who are not fortunate enough to have regular Internet access, the number is even more staggering.

Very few inventions and innovations — if any at all — have both affected so many people on a global scale, and can be traced back to one individual.

It may seem odd now, but skip forward 100 years, and I’d suggest Zuckerberg’s influence in the 21st century will be comparable to the impact Thomas Edison and his light bulb had on the 20th. Edison didn’t invent electricity, he revolutionized it; Zuckerberg didn’t invent the Internet, but he made it something that most of us can’t live without (me included).

It is worth mentioning that I obtained my Facebook page at a very early stage — February 25, 2005, to be exact — when you still had to have a valid college or university e-mail address to be a member. I’ve seen the website go through countless layout changes. I even remember the days before you’d post a status update, or post photo albums and tag your friends in pictures.

In 50 years, “Person of the Decade” might seem more appropriate for Zuckerberg. After all, it was in a mere six years that Facebook went from a dorm room project to an international network. With the rapid development of digital technology, it’s difficult to imagine the ways we might be accessing our Facebook accounts in 50 years (try explaining the concept of an iPhone to yourself even 20 years ago!).

Perhaps in 50 years we will be able to step into a virtual Facebook, much like a recent episode of the animated show South Park, in which the characters are zapped into their computers and browse their Facebook friends by walking around and talking to them.

I looked back through Time’s list of people of the year since its inaugural year in 1927, where Charles Lindbergh, then 25 years old, was selected. (Lindbergh was the youngest Person of the Year ever; Zuckerberg is second-youngest at 26.)

Many of Time’s Persons are no longer household names; in fact, there are a few whose names I did not even recognize. But there are many who became much more influential in the eye of history than anyone might have thought at the time.

Excluding U.S. presidents, some names that stick out are Adolf Hitler (1938), Mohandas Gandhi (1930), Winston Churchill (1940) and Joseph Stalin (1942). It should be noted that the influence of the Person of the Year can be a positive or negative one.

Hitler was selected for “[striding] over Europe with the swagger of a conqueror.” The actions of his regime, under his guidance, undoubtedly affected the course of world history — not to mention the possible millions of descendants of those who died under that regime who might be otherwise alive today.

Let me add, just for clarity, that I am not comparing Zuckerberg to Adolf Hitler, only suggesting that the influence Hitler would later have on the world was not foreseen in 1938 when he was selected by Time.

I believe the same of Mark Zuckerberg.

That said, perhaps Time should expand its horizons and work toward honoring people with a much larger influence on a much larger scale. In Zuckerberg’s case, I think “Person of the Decade” would suit him well.