North America is located in the Northern and Western Hemispheres, with an area of 24.7 million square kilometers. It covers 16.5% of the Earth’s total land area, or 4.8% of its total surface.
It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Pacific Ocean to the south and west, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Caribbean Sea to the southeast. Another continent, South America, borders it to the southeast.
Being the third largest continent, North America is home to more than 500 million people, making it the world’s fourth-most-populated continent. The most populous country in the continent is the United States of America with more than 300 million people, followed by Mexico with 112.3 million people, and Canada with 32.6 million. The most commonly-used languages in North America are English, French, and Spanish.
North America’s most developed nations are Canada and the United States. Its largest metropolitan cities, based on population, include Mexico City (with more than 21 million people), New York (with 19 million), Los Angeles (with 13 million), Chicago (with 9.5 million), and Dallas-Fort Worth (with 6.4 million).
Demographically-speaking, the continent is widely diverse. It is home to a large number of African-Americans, Caucasians, Mestizos, Indigenous Americans, and Asians. Its cultural influences are a mixture of French, British, and Spanish, as most of the North American countries were once colonized by these Europeans.
There are three North American sub-regions: North America, which is composed of the United States of America, Mexico, Canada, Bermuda, Greenland, and Saint Pierre and Miquelon; Caribbean, which is mostly made up of small island-nations like Barbados, Antigua, Trinidad and Tobago, Dominican Republic, Cayman Islands, Grenada, United States Virgin Islands, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and Cuba; and Central America, which includes Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua, and Guatemala.
