It is uncommon to consider the return on investment (ROI) for social network use, so let‘s do exactly that. Sometimes I wonder why I use social media, but these thoughts haven’t changed much about my behavior until now. I left Facebook in 2013, not because I decided how I wanted to spend my time, but because they sold my data. (link: /blog/2023/January/Why-I-left-Instagram text: I left Instagram several times,) but again, the reason wasn’t the time I spent there or my mental health. It was because I disliked the experience. Recently, I started to think about this whole social media thing differently, and I want to share my thoughts.

What are we investing when we use Social media?

Time

First and foremost, we invest time. According to Statista, the average person spends 2 hours and 27 minutes daily on social media.^[1] On many devices, you can check your usage. For example, on a Mac, iPad, or iPhone, the Screen Time feature will show you how much time you spend on each application or website per day or week. Open your device’s Settings app and tap on Screen Time > See All Activity. There is a number there for every single app you use, if you have Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, or YouTube on your phone, they‘re likely to be in the top five most used apps. Now imagine what the impact might be if you invested this time in your partner, kids, or yourself instead—or just multiply it with your salary. Moving on…

Energy

Besides time, we also expend mental energy on social media. We argue, get excited or angry reading things we don’t remember five seconds later, and favorite, reblog, boost, and share posts we care about for five seconds. All of this takes away energy we could use to build a better life, write a book, or go to the gym. While there is no metric for this your device records automatically, just try to recall if your last scrolling-excursion on social media left you happy, refreshed, and ready to tackle new challenges.

Brain-Idle-Time and Creativity

This is a bit more tricky, so please bare with me. Especially younger readers who grew up in the world of smartphones might find this difficult to process. Your brain never does nothing. In fact, it often becomes especially active when you do nothing, or a mindless task like folding the laundry, or sleep. The reduced demand on your brain gives your brain a chance to ramp up its activity and start working on the more complex problems. You can also turn this into an activity and meditate.

Your brain never does nothing. In fact, it often becomes especially active when you do nothing—or sleep.

Scientists have been trying to understand the idle state of our brains for a while now, and what science has uncovered should significantly inform how we spend our time. We can summarize that our brains have a sort of to-do list. A list of thinking tasks for “when there is time”. And if that downtime never comes, the items on your brain’s to-do pile up. Eventually these to-dos are lost and new ones take their place. Typically this list has items like: process and memorize what we learned, combine new input with existing knowledge to form understanding and ideas, etc. Pretty major stuff, in my opinion. Things we really should give our brains time to do.

We invest some of this vital idle time when we use social media, which is fine. Many of us, however, invest almost every last moment of idle time into staring at their phones and scrolling through timelines. That‘s a problem. As this idle time is already rare in our lives nowadays, we should treat it as a particularly valuable resource and ensure we keep some for ourselves. Otherwise, we deprive our brain of the chance to do its job.^[2]

What is our return on this investment

Let’s quickly establish some potential categories of returns for this time, energy, and creativity we keep investing into our social media use:

Connection

We might find people we like to connect with—personally and professionally.

Inspiration

Provided we keep enough idle time in reserve for our brains to process this input, some of the content we see will inspire us and inform the ideas we will have in the future.

Promotion

We could promote goods and services on social media. We may want to sell our own online class or get paid to post sponsored content.

The users and utilizers of social media

The ROI of social media for users

Take a moment to remember: Over the years you’ve used social media; what lasting benefit did social media add to your life? For most of us, the return on our investment might be a positive reply or comment here or a favorite there, but in the grand scheme of our lives, social media is unlikely to have connected you to your partner, job, or paid for your house. If it did, you should get off social media, you won the lottery and it is unlikely you‘ll win it twice.

…you won the lottery and it is unlikely you‘ll win it twice.

Most of us get a kick out of some likes we might receive, but that currency of likes and replies won’t pay our bills. That engagement your post generated probably manifested itself in one way that impacted you: A change in your behavior. After receiving that like or reply, you probably spent a little more time on that particular network and looked at a couple more ads. What did not happen is that Twitter, or Facebook, or any other platform sent you some money in response to you posting something funny. The engagement you generated made them money and got you likes, but it didn‘t pay for your lunch.

Social media is a significant investment with minimal returns for most of us. Realizing this, in my opinion, is critical to learning to use social media more constructively and healthily.

The ROI of social media for utilizers

Some people invest differently in social media and have great returns on their smarter than average investment. No surprise there, behaving smarter than average often yields above average results… so, just consider this a friendly reminder of what you already knew. These users of social media build lots of connections and sell a product. They benefit from social media.

In my experience, a strong ROI on social media usually results from focused and deliberate use.

In my experience, a strong ROI on social media usually results from focused and deliberate use. This calculated use is generally practiced by people who already have a valuable product ready when they sign up for an account and people who are very strict about their time on social media. And they often almost completely stop posting to social media again as they start building their next product.

Conclusion

If you want to sell your new course, book, workshop, or promote an event, use algorithm-driven networks like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. They sell ads and you can put your sales pitch in front of millions by promoting your post to a targeted audience. Don’t sign up too early unless you are incredibly disciplined and manage to use them without wasting the time you need to build your product. Try signing up once your project produces excellent graphics, photos and videos regularly that you can use to promote it. This works, because most people will not take this advice, be grateful they decide to spend their time and money in a place that you can have access to.

If you want high-quality content from social media, use Mastodon or another network with no engagement-optimized algorithm. Avoid Mastodon servers with too many members, rather find a server you resonate with. Maybe even more than one. For example, I am on Indieweb.social, because I am passionate about the open web. I wrote (link: /blog/2023/February/how-to-mastodon text: ”How to Mastodon, a technical guide”,) to help you join the community. There is no algorithm on Mastodon, and you will only see what you choose to see by following/subscribing. This will force you to unfollow/unsubscribe from accounts that post too much or low-quality content. Some other options are discussion forums and subscribing to blogs using a feed reader. A personal favorite of mine is (link: https://daringfireball.net text: Daring Fireball. target: _blank)

There is an obvious conflict of interest here. Algorithm-driven social media allows advertisers to pay to be seen by the network‘s users. They are the network‘s bread and butter, but too much of their content will make people leave and move to another platform. These platforms also allow you to become an advertiser and have your content promoted to millions of potential customers. But if you want to use social media as a non-promoting user to connect and communicate with other interesting people, in my experience the best option is to join a network that has no algorithm or ads.

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