Is there a tipping point for social media? The FT thinks so

Sorry, you will have to go on the FT to get “social porn”, the link is here.

They call porn “clickbait”, if you blog regularly you become only too familiar with what sells people’s time, attention and delight. It is salacious but it’s true. The FT hates it and wants to see people turn back to what it publicises (it isn’t social porn).

This chart from the linked article makes me laugh

The older people, people like me – are still trying to catch up on the youngsters. But the youngsters have decided to turn their back on social porn for something else. Maybe the FT (I doubt it).

My age group (55-64) are still increasing our time on social media , I wonder what happens at 65?

It has gone largely unnoticed that time spent on social media peaked in 2022 and has since gone into steady decline, according to an analysis of the online habits of 250,000 adults in more than 50 countries carried out for the FT by the digital audience insights company GWI. And this is not just the unwinding of a bump in screen time during pandemic lockdowns — usage has traced a smooth curve up and down over the past decade-plus.

This weekend I will spend four hours on a train this weekend in the company of two youngsters who are mid twenties but were in the youngest cohort in 2022. I take some comfort, perhaps I’ll get a conversation out of them!

But what will they be talking about, some gruesome star?

I know the kind of thing that will take a little time but get a lot of attention. I just need to post a picture of Tom McPhail (pension expert).

Seriously – I get negligible readership at the best of time and posting about an IGC or the financing of New Towns is likely to plug my blog at the low end of “unread”. I am asked to learn…

I should not blog about gilt yields,  but still I do it, determined to be true to myself. I got to the 30K connected barrier with Linked in a couple of years ago. Every so often (I’ve just had it happen), Linked in reorganises my connection, I lose a couple of thousand of connections, I can’t connect with new ones and I’m admonished in a vague way. It worries me and then the reset’s over – and I’m reluctantly allowed by Linked in to share and get close in a boring kind of way.

Now I get it, the social media bonanza is not about sharing opinion and meeting new people, it’s about filling in time by following celebrities.

You are reading social porn; I must learn a new language to be a social porn star, to be ordinary.