Emma Charlton at the World Economic Forum summarizes a report that finds by cutting out three 10-minute social media checks a day you could read as many as 30 more books a year.
"Just a couple of five-minute breaks every hour are hundreds of hours yearly," the Omni Calculator's creators say. "You cut your social media time by half, and you still get plenty of time to read, run or earn money."
It recommends turning off push notifications that appear on your screen, deleting some apps, calling your friends rather than messaging them, and taking short holidays from all social media once in a while.
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How Many Extra Books Could You Read If You Quit Social Media?
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(Score: 2, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 19 2019, @03:12AM (20 children)
We've always had a problem with high school grads who are illiterate. Yes, those kind of people were around even in my youth. Today, though? Grads can only read things that are written in Tweet style with lots of emojis. Few can get through the introduction of a Harlequin romance, or a Louis L'Amour Western, let alone read the story. Paranthetically, reading Louis L'Amour can give a person an introduction to North American geography, among other things. The man actually researched before writing his stories.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @03:24AM (14 children)
Element of fascism: the decadence narrative.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 19 2019, @03:36AM (13 children)
Words of wisdom from the CTRL-LEFT.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @04:22AM (12 children)
Better than Alt-Right.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 19 2019, @04:33AM (9 children)
And, even if we accept that there is an alt-right - there is an entire spectrum of positions in between the two.
You guys are sounding like that infamous Neocon, George W. Bush. "If you're not with us, you're against us." And, that puts you in opposition to EVERY FUCKING BODY who isn't an extreme leftist. For the record, I'm not alt-right, nor do I believe that you can even define alt-right to any rational person.
Need I remind you, that on the European political spectrum, I am actually left of center? I've taken that test several times. Near center, but left, and up. Please, take the test, and see where YOU land -
https://www.gotoquiz.com/politics/political-spectrum-quiz.html [gotoquiz.com]
http://polquiz.com/ [polquiz.com]
https://www.politicalcompass.org/ [politicalcompass.org]
I like that second link - their chart is slightly different. It puts me firmly within the "moderate" camp, whereas the others make me left-authoritarian.
Go for it - maybe you'll learn for yourself that YOU are the extremist here.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday August 19 2019, @05:04AM (2 children)
I'm about 75% on both political and economic freedom axes in the second one, so not moderate but not extremist; just solidly libertarian.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Monday August 19 2019, @05:46AM (1 child)
Second one 80/95 suggests I should vote for Gary Dude Weed LMAO Johnson
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday August 19 2019, @01:05PM
Why vote for a couple of nuts when you can have the Johnson?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Monday August 19 2019, @05:25AM (2 children)
According to gotoquiz and politicalcompass I am right in the middle of the left-libertarian quadrant.
Polquiz puts me out in the point of (left-wing) Liberal midway between Libertarian and Totalitarian.
I think they are still lacking in subtlety though. I would say that I am leftist*/hard anarchist on social freedoms and centre-but-tax-the-rich on economic freedoms.
(Note that in regard to society, these quizzes and I are still using the old-fashioned definition of a tolerant, accepting, mind-your-own-business, left.)
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 19 2019, @06:37AM (1 child)
Lacking in subtlety, yes, I have to agree. The real advantage of these tests, is they open your eyes to the fact that left-right scales are even more lacking.
I suspect that real subtlety would require years-long monitoring of multiple tests administered in school. But, I see real problems with that. We already can see schools pushing for conformity to a politically correct viewpoint. If the school system knew more about you, the student, then the school system would have more leverage to force you into conformity. Since the public education system is run by government, that would give unprecedented power to whichever party was on top, at the moment. That power might ensure that the same party stayed on top.
Giving "credit" where it is due, the progressive left has been playing that game for well over fifty years now. I certainly don't want to give them any more tools, and most certainly not any more effective tools.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @10:54AM
This is why on the enhanced scale we added "up" and "down".
Imagine a new axis for plotting the frontier of the kind of man.
Just imagine it.
Right.
Forget it.
DnD already patented it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @09:38AM (2 children)
Not sure about that, considering that there are plenty of radicalized fascists here now. Of course, America is winning that race with their Nazi in-chief. You are not centrist, you are on the right wing. If the chart says "left of center", then maybe something is wrong with the chart.
And my views are not even "left". I'm a liberal. Centrist. Which means that the quiz is fucked. Answering questions about "race" in any way other than non-racist makes you a "leftie".
https://www.gotoquiz.com/politics/poli-compare-parties.html [gotoquiz.com]
oh right ... so that makes sense. Democrats, a right-wing party by other nation standards, is very left wing. I think there is something wrong with the scale! And I wonder where actual left wing parties would fit.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 19 2019, @10:44AM
You don't have to be a babbling crazy Marxist to be left of center. That particular test is close to some of the others I've taken:
I'm a little further left, and a little less authoritarian here than in other places. Still, real close.
As for your last paragraph, something is wrong with the scale. That something is dishonesty. The right-wing democratic party is lying to you, to all of us, each and every day. Identity politics is bullshit, through and through. Almost every issue on which the D's take a position, is a distraction away from real, important issues. Those more important issues on which the D's take a position, such as immigration, are clearly designed to undermine the status quo in the US. They don't like that white people outnumber other groups, so they want to bring in enough non-white people to outnumber whites. It's an intentional offensive against white people, that has been ongoing for well over 30 years. Talk more white women into aborting their babies, while bringing in the brown caravans with promises of free goodies - soon enough, there will be no white voice.
Imagine if, instead of white people, the D's were actively working to silence the black voice. Oh, but wait - we don't have to imagine it. The black voice is effectively being silenced at the same time as the white voice, because there are fewer blacks than whites. Odd how that works, huh? Margaret Sanger's dream was to smother the black community in America, after all.
Or, to summarize all of that - the Democratic party in the US is actually alt-right, clothed in leftist garb.
That's why I get so very tired of all the alt-right gobbledy-gook. It's all a pack of lies. D's have more in common with alt-right, fascism, Nazism, and all the other -isms that they attribute to the Republicans, than all the rest of us Americans put together.
Planned Parenthood, celebrating 113 years of surreptitious genocide against Americans, black and white!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @11:07AM
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @03:33PM (1 child)
CTRL-ALT-DELETE will fix it.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday August 19 2019, @03:55PM
But wouldn't that be wasting your vote? Go ahead! Reject Ctrl-Left and Alt-Right. Just throw your vote away!
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Monday August 19 2019, @03:55AM (1 child)
Give me a reboot of Coyote vs. RoadRunner that does the same thing and I'm in, no questions asked. I had no idea how much of the southwestern US actually looked like those deserts until I started travelling a little more.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 19 2019, @04:59AM
I grinned when I read that. But, honestly? I have to echo it right back at you. My stepdad's description of Dallas, Tx went like, "It's the only place I've ever been, where I stood in mud up to my knees, with dust blowing in my face." I thought it was funny - until I experience the same thing, albeit, in a different location. The world is full of things that you won't appreciate, unless you experience them.
My personal favorite, is the tide in the upper Bay of Fundy. The river actually falls about fifty feet, into the bay, at St. John at low tide. At high tide, the river reverses, and flows inland. I'm finding a lot of videos that show the rapids reversing - but none that actually show the waterfall. Too bad I had no video equipment all those years ago when I was there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0TqFXiPfuk [youtube.com]
The guy making that video is much braver than I - I stayed up at the tree line, and watched it happening!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Monday August 19 2019, @12:58PM
When I was in HS I would date girls who would read that kind of "female pr0n". And frankly that gave me a pretty big dating pool and the girls knew it attracted guys, aside from romance novels inherently having pr0nographic value for women. Two genre of books would get me to hit on a girl if she was reading in the high school library, hard sci fi and hard core pr0n "romance" novels.
It didn't actually work that well; I remember seeing a girl reading one of the Foundation series novels and I practically asked her to marry me as a pick up line; we dated for awhile but turns out we had nothing in common other than liking the Foundation series, unfortunately. Looking at the books she's reading is an interesting pick up strategy, none the less. Or maybe the fact its an effective strategy to get dates means it does work well; I donno.
Its pretty hot to ask her for her favorite chapter in her romance novel, then pass the book back and forth in class while reading some crazy "50 shades of gray" type of stuff. They call them "romance" novels but half of those books are sex scenes so I donno about that. I admit they have more plot than the typical pr0n video, but not much more.
Its a bit of a double standard because these girls would carry their pr0n novels around and show them off and discuss with each other the finer points of their novels, but guys were not allowed to read penthouse letters or look at magazine centerfolds during class. And note the girl-pr0n books usually had a nearly naked weight lifter guy as the cover photo so the content was pretty obvious.
Basically the above is just a long rant that like every other form of technology ever invented, pr0n sells the tech pretty well and always has sold well. I really wouldn't advise claiming people don't read because there's not enough written pr0n stories or whatever. That stuff is actually wildly popular, at least among women, and guys who like to pick up women.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday August 19 2019, @04:20PM
Kids these days are so dumb, it's all the fault of ${MODERN TECHNOLOGY THING}. If only they would do more of ${LESS MODERN TECHNOLOGY THING} they would be so much smarter.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday August 19 2019, @05:33PM
Which is all you need to become President of the United States, now. Why should they bother to improve?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @03:35AM (21 children)
Seeing that most books are ludicrously expensive, I'd read more if books were around $3-5 USD.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @03:45AM
You have maybe heard of Bit-Torrent? The typical novel is only several hundred kb, you can download tens of thousands of books in the time it takes to download one brain-numbing movie from Hollywood. I hate to make a plug for Amazon, but there are tons of books available for free, which you can read on the Kindle Cloud reader. Many, MANY more books available at one dollar. For prices less than ten dollars each, there are more books than any person can read in a lifetime.
Cost doesn't prevent you reading. Several other factors, in some combination, can prevent anyone from reading. Lack of motivation, illiteracy, ignorance, or, as TFA suggests, to much time wasted on frivolities, such as social media.
(Score: 3, Informative) by driverless on Monday August 19 2019, @03:54AM (5 children)
I don't do social media, so I'd be reading zero extra books.
It's giving up wanking [youtube.com] that would be the real time gain.
(Score: 3, Funny) by ilPapa on Monday August 19 2019, @04:07AM (3 children)
Yes, but those 4 minutes times a day only adds up to about a half-hour. That's barely long enough to read the latest Barney Google & Snuffy Smith.
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 3, Funny) by ilPapa on Monday August 19 2019, @04:10AM
That was meant to read "4 minutes 8 times a day". I stepped all over my own joke. I apologize to the class.
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 3, Funny) by driverless on Monday August 19 2019, @04:12AM (1 child)
Well I don't know about you but I turn to the Farmer's Almanac when I want, uh, inspiration.
(Score: 4, Funny) by ilPapa on Monday August 19 2019, @12:06PM
Sears Roebuck Catalog is hot.
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday August 19 2019, @05:00AM
I'd say I'm right there with you but for the connotations that would give your second sentence. I already read all the books I have the attention span for though, so giving up training for the Wanklympics would be pointless.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Informative) by SomeGuy on Monday August 19 2019, @03:54AM
Have you tried the public library?
How about a thrift store, or flea market? Or perhaps borrowing books from friends?
I know, I know, it's not on a cell phone so it is somehow unthinkable.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by c0lo on Monday August 19 2019, @04:04AM (6 children)
Over 59000 free ebooks [gutenberg.org] and legally so. At one per day, it will take you 160+ years to finish them.
If you don't like them for free, I think we should be able to arrange something for you to get the satisfaction of paying $3 for each book you read, deal?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Monday August 19 2019, @04:28AM (1 child)
You beat me to posting the Gutenberg Project, but it is also https.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ [gutenberg.org]
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @04:50AM
Nitpicking, but if you hover over the link I posted, you'll see I posted the https one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @04:40AM (3 children)
Why would I want to start something that takes 160 years to finish, when I can read all of Twitter and Facebook in five minute sessions twice an hour?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday August 19 2019, @05:06AM (2 children)
Why would you want to read Twitter or Facebook at all, much less twice an hour?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @11:25AM (1 child)
Some people are so desperate to do so they will post from their fridge
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday August 20 2019, @03:32AM
https://www.businessinsider.com/smart-fridge-tweet-dorothy-probably-fake-2019-8 [businessinsider.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Monday August 19 2019, @04:38AM (1 child)
What, doesn't Sci-Hub or Library Genesis have a few million books for you to read?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday August 20 2019, @03:40AM
https://www.nytimes.com/books/best-sellers [nytimes.com]
6/10 of the Combined Print & E-Book Fiction and Nonfiction categories can be found on Library Genesis. That result matches my experience with searching lists of books I compiled to check. I would find 50% or more. Other sites or torrents will fill in the gaps.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Touché) by jb on Monday August 19 2019, @06:46AM
Many second-hand books (even in good condition) cost less than that.
As an added bonus, most older books are far better written than anything published today.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Monday August 19 2019, @01:44PM
Time value comes into play.
For the sake of argument we'll take the high end of $5 and assume its a fiction novel that you can be permanently done with in ten hours. That's 50 cents per hour.
Arguably that's cheaper than ten vending machine cans of corn syrup soda, more fun, and healthier.
If you want an expensive hobby activity, taking my family to the public museum costs $96 (not a typo) and figure we get five hours of fun for four people that divides out to $4.80/hr cost of museum fun, which is about ten times as expensive as buying brand new books. Admittedly the museum probably is ten times cooler.
Note when you're deciding if something is ludicrous expensive or not, figure it takes more than $2K/month to live in the USA, so on a 24x7 basis that's about $3/hr just to keep the lights on, even if all you do is silently meditate all day. Renting an R44 helicopter and CFI is just under $500/hr, now that is "ludicrously expensive" whereas something that costs a tenth the cost of "keeping the lights on" like buying books is really very cheap.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday August 19 2019, @02:16PM
http://www.gutenberg.org/ [gutenberg.org]
And if you can't be bothered to actually read it or want to listen to something interesting while you jog or whatever.
https://librivox.org/ [librivox.org]
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday August 19 2019, @02:18PM
Also, "Half-Price Books" https://www.hpb.com/ [hpb.com] I typically only buy new, if I can't find one at a discount and/or it's a new release for a series I'm reading.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday August 19 2019, @03:45AM (7 children)
Most people I know who are fan of social media can't read terribly fast. They'd need more than 5 minutes here and there to go through 3 books a year, let alone 30.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday August 19 2019, @04:06AM (3 children)
At first.
If they keep practicing, who knows how many more they could read?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Funny) by Gaaark on Monday August 19 2019, @04:21AM (2 children)
I heard JFK took speed reading classes so he could get through the names in his little black book faster.
"MarilynMonroeIngaArvadFrancisAnnCannonJudithExner....oh... AndThatWomanIMarriedAnd....."
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Monday August 19 2019, @04:55AM (1 child)
Al Gore wasn't fully [wikipedia.org] invented [wikipedia.org] at the time, no Project Gutenberg for JFK.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @06:10PM
You don't know about Al Gore Rhythms?
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Monday August 19 2019, @04:32AM (1 child)
Well, they need a lot of pictures and video. All those jpeg files and You tube videos take a lot of time.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday August 19 2019, @08:33AM
Oh, man, those animated gif memes are sooo exhausting (grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @03:41PM
Depends on how many words are longer than four letters.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday August 19 2019, @04:13AM (3 children)
" by cutting out three 10-minute social media checks a day you could read as many as 30 more books a year."
Geez...what could you do by cutting out ten 3-minute checks?
Download more porn?
Download 30 short stories?
Write ten Aristarchus articles and see them all rejected? ;)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday August 19 2019, @05:08AM (2 children)
It'd take me longer to write up ari subs. I'm a far better troll than a shitposter.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday August 19 2019, @08:37AM (1 child)
Yeah, I know about your Dunning Krueger affliction, no need to repeat yourself so often. (grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday August 19 2019, @01:08PM
I loved those movies. Freddy made me laugh my ass off.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by darkfeline on Monday August 19 2019, @06:00AM (3 children)
If I could reallocate chunks of the day I would be a god.
As it is, I can't reallocate ten minutes here and there and join them into a 30 minute block of time. Without such a superpower, replacing consumption of small bits of content with reading books does not work, unless you're a delusional manager. Three hours interspersed with meetings is not the same as a contiguous block of three hours. Context switches are extremely expensive.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Monday August 19 2019, @06:40AM (1 child)
Context switches are extremely expensive.
So, are people interrupting their workflow with social media checks or interrupting their social media checks with the activities they are supposed to be paying attention too [independent.co.uk]?
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @08:40AM
Yes.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday August 19 2019, @01:35PM
True. And maybe reading in those 10 minute chunks is not productive for you. (I do know some people who read books in those small chunks, and it doesn't bother them.)
So maybe find a different productive activity to do in those 10-minute chunks. It's easy to just go check Facebook/whatever social media. Or go check your email. (Dealing inefficiently with email can also be a huge time waste.) But maybe find something else to do that you'll both enjoy and will satisfy some goal. Maybe go to one of those quiz websites and learn the names of countries in the continents you never learned well. Or do virtual/physical flashcards for words in another language. (Language practice is often best done intermittently anyway -- get an app and do that instead of social media.) Or make a cup of tea -- explore different types of tea and use the time to relax. Or take a walk around the office and get some exercise.
Or, you know, just sit and "be bored." Time for self-reflection seems to be disappearing these days, but it's really important to just sit back and think. Studies have shown it's important for cognitive processes, memory, developing understanding of a new topic... all sorts of things.
People have had 10-minute chunks of downtime ever since people have worked for someone else. Whether you're in an office or digging ditches in a field, at some point your boss is going to say, "Hold on a sec," while he figures out the next step or while you're waiting for another worker to show up to complete a task. The question is what you do with that time. As I said, for some people reading seems to be an option -- they don't mind small chunks. If you do, I'll bet there are a lot more useful options for using that time than reading an endless list of BS on Facebook or whatever.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Coward, Anonymous on Monday August 19 2019, @07:55AM
If everyone cut back on social media, authors would be more productive, and we'd get even more crappy books to try free samples of on our Kindles.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @08:18AM (1 child)
unless u actually read academic stuff =)
also it is artificial complexity, just like social media.
it triggers your mind to thik itself having experienced shit, and end up messing up your pesonality into a castle of cards...
of course, it serves as inspiration.
on of my favorite books, although a bit shit, is Wheel of time...
You have to know a bit of psychology and evolution to understand who the antagonists like Elan Morin and Aginor and the eternally laughing Balthamel are, but i almost wept of joy when i saw that others remember the old gods too... Once we were someone else =)
I have gone on so many mental tangents while reading those books, i would have not understood a sliver of mister Darwins teaching, without them...
But, for each their own...
-zug
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday August 19 2019, @04:02PM
Here are some books [goalkicker.com] that are based on real life social media. If you count Stack Overflow as social media. The plots and character development in these books are amazing.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DavePolaschek on Monday August 19 2019, @10:35AM
So I was pretty sure I was going to see an AC commenting that books are too expensive. And sure enough... but at least someone else beat me to the "Have you heard of a library?" reply to that.
I wonder if SN counts as social media. Some days it wastes my time more effectively than the twitters.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday August 19 2019, @01:10PM (1 child)
No one has mentioned the power law distribution of use issue.
Its kinda like TV... my elderly MiL has the TV on if she's awake, so she "views" TV for like 18 hours per day. I essentially no longer watch TV, there's nothing left worth spending the time. In theory that means we average out to 9 hours per day each, but in reality she can't read for 18 hours straight (or ... could she?) and I wouldn't gain any spare time by going from 0 hours per day to 0 hours per day, so I can't gain any reading time either.
You can't, or shouldn't, make policy based on averages of a scenario under a power law distribution. You can't cut 30 minutes er day out of an activity that under power law rules is used less than 5 minutes by 90% of the population, then multiply the "saved" 30 minutes by 100% of the population to get a theoretical proposed sum. It takes a lot more math to get it right.
Early Gen-X is an interesting snapshot into the power law. Like half my high school classmates don't do social media at all, maybe a quarter very sporadically to the point where if you FB message them you should probably call them on the phone to tell them to check FB, and there's like ten idiots (out of several hundred classmates) who shitpost roughly every 45 minutes all day long. For like 75% of the population, completely giving up social media would only save perhaps five minutes per week, and for the true addicts they need treatment not books to read because they're addicted spending many hours per day shitposting.
Its actually kinda annoying that there's a meme of "reconnect with lost friends and classmates" because the vast majority of my actual lost friends and classmates simply don't do social media on any platform. And the former classmates who won't STFU on social media are exactly the kind of people you'd never loose connection to anyway because they won't STFU in general (a generation ago they'd be talking on the phone 24x7, I suppose)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday August 19 2019, @02:24PM
Citation needed.
I've just spent several minutes browsing for stats, and I don't see anything close to those numbers. It's true that older folks tend to be on social media less. Maybe your claim about 75% of the population would be true of users 65+ years of age, but even then I don't know -- as it's becoming more common for retired folks to use social media to "keep in touch" with the world. And although I couldn't find stats to verify this, I suspect that older folks tend to use social media differently from younger folks. That is -- a retired person is probably more likely to log into Facebook in the morning while having coffee and spend 15 minutes or 30 minutes or an hour browsing the news of the day, like they'd read a newspaper or look at obituaries and various other things retired people do. So they wouldn't be saving "five minutes per week" if they gave it up -- they'd likely be gaining larger chunks of time every day. Of course, I'm not sure older folks even should give it up: I think it may actually have a positive effect on keeping them "connected" for some older folks.
For younger people who seem to have some sort of weird tic that requires them to check their phone every minute or two, I agree that a lot of the regained time may be in small chunks that have fewer potential uses, but even 5-10 minute chunks of downtime can be used productively. Maybe not for reading, but for other activities (as I posted about above).
I'd imagine Gen X users are somewhere in the middle. Although I've met Gen X folks who seem tied to their phone now, most still seem to have an attention span and can actually carry on a conversation for a while without looking to a phone. I suspect many of them are closer to the retiree style of social media use: rather than sporadic chunks intermittently throughout the day, they have a longer span or two where they read stuff for a while.
I just spent about 10 minutes trying to find stats on median internet use, rather than mean/average, but Google and other search engines seem to love to turn "median" into "social media" in any search, so it's a pain in the neck to find anything -- but I did see one stat that said median social media use per day was now over 1 hour/day. (Even though stats typically say average is over 2 hours/day now.) Unfortunately, I couldn't find details of that median stat, so I'm sure of it. I wish I could find some better median stats, rather than "averages" which are available everywhere.
Regardless, I highly doubt your 75% five minutes/week claim when the median usage is supposedly now over an hour/day. Even if that were only true of social media users, since 80% of the U.S. population now has at least one social media profile, it's highly doubtful that 75% of people could only save 5 minutes/week.
My guess is that it's specific to YOU and the type of friends you like. I find that increasing numbers of my friends are disengaged from social media too (if they were ever active). But that's because the people I like to hang out with are often self-reflective folks who prefer to sit around thinking, rather than reflexively checking their phone to see what some idiot has posted two minutes ago. However, I think you're extending your perception of your friends and people you know to the overall population, and I don't think that works here. MOST people are now active on social media to some extent. And of those who are active, MOST spend a LOT of time on it (or at least more than a few minutes per week -- one stat to show this which I did find is that 74% of U.S. adults in 2019 say they have a Facebook account, and of those 51% say they use Facebook multiple times per day, while 74% use it at least once/day... and that's just for Facebook alone).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @11:51PM
Did the researcher at least cite his source: https://xkcd.com/2183/ [xkcd.com]
(Score: 1) by jman on Tuesday August 20 2019, @11:49AM
Am not your typical modern info user, eschewing FB, voice mail, texting, emojis, etc. Don't even really care for the television, but my mate uses it like an appendage, so when I'm not reading we watch stuff together. Comes from being born a couple of decades before DNS, I guess; one leg in the analog world, one here. I prefer the printed page. Am trying to adapt to reading on tablets but it's slow going. If only Stephenson's "books" from SnowCrash actually existed.
The article's intent is good, but what actual reader would spend only five minutes at a time on a book? That's just a few pages. Hard to process (and retain) anything if you put it down every 600 words.
I also wonder how many people would miss the point completely and spend the reading time on their screens, rather than an actual, dead-tree novel.
The image of someone taking time to use an app so they could figure out how they were using their time was hilarious.