If you haven't already, I am sure you have contemplated it. The name has a nice ring to it as well 'Digital Detox'. There are now millions of self-proclaimed addicts to digital content. Soon to be billions. And there are plenty of us that are in denial as well.
I want to make sure you have some facts to begin with.
Brandwatch shared some mind-blowing stats in March 2016. Here are just a few.
- There are 2.3 billion active social media users
- 1 million new active mobile social users are added every day. That’s 12 each second
- Social networks earned an estimated $8.3 billion from advertising in 2015
- 78 percent of people who complain to a brand via Twitter expect a response within an hour
- On WordPress alone, 56 million blog posts are published every month
- Facebook now sees 8 billion average daily video views from 500 million users
- By 2014, Google had indexed 30,000,000,000,000 pages of the internet
- Facebook adds 500,000 new users every day; 6 new profiles every second
- There are 40 million active small business Pages on Facebook
- 300 hours of video are uploaded to Youtube every minute
- Over 80 million photos are uploaded each day to Instagram
- 42% of all online women use Pinterest
- More than 1 million members have published content on LinkedIn
- The average CEO has 930 LinkedIn connections
And you can find even more stats here:
https://www.brandwatch.com/2016/03/96-amazing-social-media-statistics-and-facts-for-2016/
In years to come, all those content spewing platforms will be asking us our preferences. Once they know our preferences they will only serve up those bits of content we have asked for. No more no less. Unfortunately this means that we have to make a decision. What do we really need to see on a daily basis? Not what we want to see but what we need to see.
There is a big difference, because as an addict we have many wants and we have to slowly wean ourselves off a lot of the content that we are already addicted to.
The trouble with all of us, we are constantly in FOMO, 'fear of missing out'. That's why we are addicted. If you want to learn why, read my article, 'Do Social Networks Sell Drugs'.
By watching the video below you will also learn what the Internet is doing to our brains.
LinkedIn created a brilliant eBook with my favourite illustrator. @gapingvoid (Hugh Macleod) creates the most amazing messages through his illustrations. Read more about him and @gapingvoid here: http://www.gapingvoid.com/blog/team-members/hugh-macleod/
Each week I will share one of the articles and illustrations from the eBook and give you my opinion, insight and meaning of the words and illustrations.