Ahh social media, the latest addition to the addictive drug family. Or is it predominantly used as a tool for bettering yourself?
I spend hours of my week on social media. Whether it be indulging in a deepening youtube hole on cooking videos that only further my hunger caused by neglecting my lunch, or attempting to shallowly learn and educate myself on irrelevant topics with outdated Wikipedia pages. I invest a large part of my free time to social media, but why? And what is social media?
I'm sure everyone knows what the large part of social media is. I mean, my generation pretty much grew up with it. Essentially childhood friends. But social media may extend a bit past what you may think. By definition social media is any digital tool that allows you to share and create content and post it out to the abyss for all to see.
Of the 7.75 billion people in this world 3.8 billion are active social media users. That's roughly 49% of the total population. Social media can take control of your life. The automatically refreshing scroll means there is no time for your brain to be distracted from your screen. The endorphins released from a notification that once signified a potential new friend request or a new video posted by your favourite YouTube channel, has now been replaced with “Charlie *** has posted for the first time in a while”… and yet I still jump to the phone and check what Facebook or Instagram NEEDS me to see.
Businesses and brands have taken advantage of these behaviours and created a new form of marketing and advertising based around our presence on social media, to much of the populations disliking. But can this be used to your benefit? I like to think so.
Targeted marketing on social media can be advantageous! "How?" you may ask. Well, we all know that your phone listens to you. It’s terrible, but it is true. So why not use this to find deals you’ve always wanted. Are you looking to move out soon and need a new bed? Seductively whisper into your phone mic before you go to sleep about the perfect IKEA queen sized bed and sure enough, after a few attempts, you’ll be targeted with a sale!
Talk to your friends on Instagram about how much you need a new corduroy jacket, there will be a sponsored ad selling just that within the hour.
Here is a chart of the “Path to Purchase” shown through age demographics.
This figure represents the behaviour we show before purchasing an item. The heavy reliance of social media goes to show how much modern society trusts and follows the advice of friends and even strangers online.
So in the end, can an addiction to social media be used as a tool? Or is it better to separate yourself for the best part and use it sparingly? Do you use social media to you advantage? If so, leave a comment so I can change my addiction into a tool for success!