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Growing up, I did not see Mercator at all often.
Besause maps was developed as tools for navigation.
But if you want an idea of the relative sizes and positions of the countries of the world, you should use a globe.
Regarding colonization, I’d note that Greenland, Canada and Siberia wasn’t the greatest colonizers. The conspiracy theory about Marcator justifying colonization does not really make sense. Norway, Iceland and Greenland gets a much bigger size boost than Spain, France and UK. But Greenland was colonized, not a colonizer.
It's not perfect for navigation either, especially over long distance if you want to navigate from Europe to the US, going in straight line over a Mercator projection is going to make your trip much longer than it ought to be. So while it makes sense for smaller-scale maps because the angles are preserved, it's totally pointless for a world map.
As an example compare this to the straigh line between Edinburgh and Miami in mercator projection: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=edinburgh+miami
Wasn't that primarily because of sea trade and the mercator projection being very useful for that because you can draw a straight line on it and then set a straight course?
As such, while the Mercator projection makes total sense for a map of northern Europe or the Caribbean, it makes absolutely no sense as a map of the entire world.
Keep in mind: that's 500 years ago, not 50 years ago. There's no question that we have better tools today but the question was why the mercator projection was so successful it became the default. I think "it was super useful at the time because it made navigation easy, reliable, and available to everyone, at any any weather" is a much more compelling explanation than "the would-be colonizers spread it because their home-countries were enlarged and they liked that and used it to oppress the equatorial countries".
With a compass, a sextant, a clock, and geometric calculations to get the intermediate points you'll then use a straight course to rally these point. The Mercator projection just inverse the order of the calculations (going from the intermediate points to course is straightforward as you just go in straight line over the Mercator projection), but deriving the said points requires calculations. If you have a globe, it's the other way around.
> is a much more compelling explanation than "the would-be colonizers spread it because their home-countries were enlarged and they liked that and used it to oppress the equatorial countries".
This is a strawman though, nobody serious would claim it has been designed for that reason. The fact is that it distorted the view of peoples in a way that aligned situ colonists propaganda at home. But those claims aren't at all equivalent.