Our Time is Their Money

Photo by Camilo Jimenez on Unsplash

Today, our attention is constantly focused on the tiny digital devices we hold in our hands and keep in our back pockets. 

Technology is constantly changing and on the move. Powerful social platforms including Instagram, Facebook and TikTok are striving to discover new ways to hold our attention for as long as possible. Time is a valuable asset that we are quick to give away to social media platforms. Our time is their money, and they are using it to discover new ways to hold our attention. Simply put, social media is addictive. The average Gen Z-er (those born in the mid 1990s- 2000s) spends an average of three hours a day on social media. That’s just social media, not taking into account other ways of engaging socially such as texting, checking emails or browsing the internet.  

 

Social businesses have a market strategy and it’s working well. They’ve found ways to steal our attention and coax us into giving our information freely to them. While on some level it’s frightening, there’s also ways to look at it from another side. Scott Macklin, a professor of communications at Trinity Western University, says our job as social media users is to “discern and participate in media that matters...heals and restores.” If these companies are constantly searching for ways to keep our attention, we should seek media outlets that are valuable and worthy of our attention.

“What I find most fascinating as we work our way through the implications of the movement from transmission to transaction to transformation regarding social media, is that we have become both consumers and the product,” Macklin continued. “The currency of the day is trust and time.” 

 

While social media companies understand that our time is currency, many of their users unfortunately do not share in this realization. Social media platforms are designed to thrive off users simply engaging in their content, and scrolling. They don’t care about the content their users are putting out into the world, only that they continue to do so. There are some organizations, such as the Centre for Humane Technology, that are pushing for a more ethical design of social media platforms. As this issues gains more traction, hopefully we’ll see a change in the way these platforms value our time.