#media-consumption — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #media-consumption, aggregated by home.social.
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ICYMI: 96% of advertisers back audio as Bauer study exposes glaring investment gap: Sound Check Europe 2026: 96% of advertisers will hold or grow audio spend, yet audio captures only 5% of ad investment despite one-fifth of media consumption. https://ppc.land/96-of-advertisers-back-audio-as-bauer-study-exposes-glaring-investment-gap/ #AudioMarketing #Advertising #MediaConsumption #DigitalMarketing #AdSpend
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Zap! What television programmers invented and Silicon Valley perfected - part 2 www.linkedin.com/pulse/zap-what… #history #mediaConsumption #television #SocialMedia #moralPanics
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Americans Spend an Average of 6.3 Hours Daily on Mobile Devices; Older Users Log Up to 358 Minutes Across 17 Apps By Adam Blacker | Apptopia We took a look at Apptopia’s U.S. consumer panel data ...
#apps #Business #chart #Consumer-Behavior #ConsumerTrends #Internet #media-consumption #news #Social-Media #Technology
Origin | Interest | Match -
Media producers have a #bias. Would be nice to have a #tool that assists with our #mediaconsumption. Not so much as a #censor, but as an informer. An #app that pre-digests #content, and then serves it with additional information to understand what and why something is presented to us, in a specific manner. All with the aim to reduce #cognitiveload and supporting #criticalthinking powered consumption of media consumption, in a #content #saturated #environment.
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Broadband TV News: Older viewers drive YouTube’s long-form growth. “Based on a 56,000-respondent global tracker, Ampere says 85% of internet users now watch YouTube each month, with 18% of users reporting that they watch full-length movies and TV shows on the platform. The strongest engagement with this long-form catalogue sits among 35-64-year-olds, challenging perceptions of YouTube as a […]
https://rbfirehose.com/2025/11/12/broadband-tv-news-older-viewers-drive-youtubes-long-form-growth/
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Here is my #MonthlySummary with the media I consumed during July.
Also my second post for #Blaugust2025, or maybe the first, besides the introduction/announcement, I guess
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»#Meta is reportedly working on an #ultralight #VRheadset that is specially designed for #mediaconsumption and #immersivevideos and is set to be launched in 2026.« https://www.heise.de/en/news/Report-Meta-plans-lightweight-premium-VR-glasses-for-media-consumption-10429842.html?Metaver.se #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #XR #VR #MR #AR #BeyondPictures
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🎭 "I Am an Audience"—the gripping saga of a man who heroically conquers the monumental task of consuming media without actually producing anything. 🎬 Spoiler alert: After a marathon of indecision and #procrastination, his magnum opus remains a figment of his #imagination. 📚🤯
https://ratsfromrocks.substack.com/p/i-am-an-audience-first-and-foremost #IAmAnAudience #MediaConsumption #CreativeStruggles #HackerNews #ngated -
Tubefilter: Two-thirds of U.S. consumers see YouTube as a “realistic destination” for movies and TV shows. “YouTube‘s success on TV screens is legitimizing it in the eyes of the average American consumer. That’s the main takeaway from a survey conducted by Looper Insights; the firm found that two-thirds of respondents agreed with the idea that YouTube is a ‘realistic destination’ for […]
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Global Media Consumption Will Decline This Year For First Time Since 2009 – Study
#News #Media #Mediaconsumption #PQMedia #Research #Televisionhttps://deadline.com/2025/04/global-media-consumption-will-decline-2025-study-1236370369/
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Put guardrails on your news intake! Consider your media diet an intentional choice.
Don’t let the 24-hour news cycle dictate your day.
Choose your medium and dedicate a specific time to consume news.
For me, it means zero news on social media during non-working hours.
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When news is stressful, how do you balance staying informed with ‘doomscrolling’?
#SocialMedia #News #Doomscrolling #MentalHealth #Internet #StayInformed #Mindfulness #SelfCare #DigitalWellbeing #ScreenTime #Media #MediaConsumption #Balance #HealthyHabits
https://the-14.com/when-news-is-stressful-how-do-you-balance-staying-informed-with-doomscrolling/ -
I have to admit that in the last few years I have been watching quite a lot of videos on YouTube, but I am growing more and more tired of these 10 minute chunks of unrelated stuff that are not going anywhere. Not sure whether I have changed or the YouTube community, but I guess it frees me up to seek some longer videos, video series, and books. Anyone feeling the same?
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We need to talk about Fiji
It’s 1995. A momentous event is about to rock the lives of the inhabitants of the island of Fiji, in the South Pacific: the arrival of television.
The island has enjoyed the convenience of electricity for only 10 years up to that point. And in the mid 1990s, it is one of the last so-called “media naive” societies in the world.
Things are about to change. Dramatically so.
Why am I turning my attention to Fiji and the profound changes brought by the arrival of television? Because what happened in Fiji – the speed of change and (spoiler alert!) the worsening of mental and physical well being of its inhabitants – is disturbing. It is the quintessential example of the tremendous influence and impact of media on people’s lives.
Let’s frame the story of Fiji through the lens of our present world. Because in hundreds of countries around the world, the arrival of smartphones and social media platforms brought cataclysmic changes – just like in Fiji in 1995.
Let’s think about Fiji first. And then let’s turn our attention to the present world – especially the lives of teenage girls.
The Fiji Study: Mass Media and Beauty Ideals
Dr. Anne Becker, a researcher from Harvard University, has been conducting groundbreaking studies about the body image of Fijians since the early 1980s.
When she first arrives on the island, in 1981, she is struck by how, traditionally, the ultimate beauty ideal in Fiji – for both men and women – is to have a robust body. Being thin is seen as a negative attribute – something to be avoided at all costs.
I interviewed Dr. Becker for my documentary The Illusionists but the footage ended up on the cutting room floor – I couldn’t find a way to organically include her testimony in the film, as I felt she deserved her own documentary. I am now resurfacing the transcripts from our interview for this story.
Dr. Becker:
So for women and men there was definitely an overarching theme that characterized beauty across both genders in Fiji. There was an appreciation of a robust body size. So people would refer to a woman, or a man, or a child as being chumubina which meant robust and having grown very well. And that really connoted a strength to work in physical labor, which is of course demanded in the village. Most of the villagers are farmers they have plantations which they farm every day, and it’s grueling work. It’s very hard work and in order to do it you need to be strong.
Television arrives on the island of Fiji in 1995. Initially, there is only one TV channel that broadcasts shows from 4pm until 11pm. Aside from one locally produced program about current affairs, all the other shows come from abroad: Beverly Hills 90210, Melrose Place, ER and Seinfeld.
Fast-forward to 1998: Dr. Becker returns to the island just three years after the arrival of television and finds that traditional values and aspirations have been completely upended.
The island’s beauty icon is now Heather Locklear.
Teenage girls suddenly aspire to be thin – and many of them develop eating disorders.
Dr Becker:
Probably eating disorders were non-existent or very rare in Fiji prior to the introduction of television. When we did our study between 1995 and 1998 our study found about 11 percent of girls admitted to having purged to lose weight – which really stunned me actually. It didn’t just surprise me, it stunned me. That to me was very similar to what I would expect to see in a secondary school in Massachusetts. We did go back in 2007 and the prevalence of numbers had gotten so high that it was beyond what I would see here in the United States, and it really struck me as that there was this epidemic of symptoms. That was a quiet epidemic… nobody was talking about this. We looked at how frequently the girls themselves viewed TV. We looked at how frequently their parents viewed TV. And of their five best friends how many of them have a TV in their home? And I had this nagging feeling, if this is a direct exposure of TV on body image and behaviors that lead to dieting. If you look at all the scientific literature on the relation of television to eating pathology or body dissatisfaction, in aggregate there’s a undeniable relationship.
The Present-Day Parallel: Social Media, Unattainable Beauty Ideals and Anxiety
Fast-forward to the present day: from Los Angeles passing through London, Mumbai and Sydney, Australia, most teenagers own smartphones and spend up to 7 hours a day consuming digital content. Numerous studies have shown a teen mental illness epidemic, starting around 2012.
Whereas watching television is a passive endeavor, smartphones and social platforms are fully interactive. Algorithms learn about what interests us (via clicks and pauses over the screen) and keep serving us content that will keep us hooked. Paraphrasing the words of Tristan Harris, co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, there are now thousands of people behind the screen, whose job is to keep us connected and scrolling for as long as possible.
In September 2021 Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee turned whistleblower, made headlines by leaking internal documents that shed light on how Facebook (now Meta Platforms, Inc.) prioritized user engagement and profit over user well-being.
A Wall Street Journal report – a series called “The Facebook Files” – featured internal documents that showed an awareness by Facebook/Meta that their platform Instagram was “toxic” for teenage girls.
The article is now behind a paywall, but according to this summary by CNBC:
The Journal cited Facebook studies over the past three years that examined how Instagram affects its young user base, with teenage girls being most notably harmed. One internal Facebook presentation said that among teens who reported suicidal thoughts, 13% of British users and 6% of American users traced the issue to Instagram.
“Thirty-two percent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse,” the researchers reportedly wrote. Facebook also reportedly found that 14% of boys in the U.S. said Instagram made them feel worse about themselves.
Haugen’s disclosures indicated that Facebook’s algorithms were designed to prioritize content that garnered more user engagement. The whistleblower’s revelations briefly sparked discussions about the need for increased transparency, regulation, and responsible content promotion on social media platforms – in order to mitigate the adverse effects on users’ mental health and body image.
And yet.
Today, two YEARS later, not much has changed. We are still witnessing lots of resistance establishing a link between the rise of anxiety and depression and screen time (especially time spent on social media).
The Fiji study was a symbol of the immense power of media and media representation.
The negative effects happening today due to unbridled smartphone and social media use go much further. Today we are constantly exposed to unattainable body ideals AND unattainable life ideals. The pressure to be good looking, in a good job, in a good relationship offline – and to constantly share and be seen online. Younger generations feel this pressures more intensely, as they have “grown up online.”
New York Times: Being 13
I invite you to read Jessica Bennett’s superb piece “Being 13” in the New York Times, which followed several 13 year old girls over the span of a year.
An excerpt:
The long-term effects of social media on the teenage brain have not yet been defined, much less proven — which isn’t to say it’s all bad. But adolescent girls have long struggled with depression and anxiety at disproportionate rates compared with their male peers, a reality that metastasized during the pandemic.
What is known is that at age 13, a person is still more than a decade away from having a fully developed prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for decision-making and impulse control. In other words, adolescents are moving into this messy digital world at a time when they desire social attention most — and are not yet wired for restraint. “It’s all gas pedal and no brakes,” said Mitch Prinstein, the chief science officer of the American Psychological Association, who testified before the Senate on the subject earlier this year.
For adults, it’s become common to name the things that make women more likely to face burnout and stress. Many of us talk about this “mental load.” But girls have a mental load, too — in facing the age-old pressure to be good enough, pretty enough, kind enough, popular enough, but now on multiple platforms, too.
I found the article illuminating – the girls featured in it and their parents were thoughtful and mature beyond their years. The comment section also provided a lot of food for thought. I saved the most compelling comments I came across – much in line with the ethos of The Realists. I would like to share them with you here, as they are powerful testimonies of a world that has completely changed in the span of only two decades:
Pandora’s Box
From Natalie in Florida (emphasis mine):
As the mom of a 13 year old, I’d say these examples over-represent tech-involved/concerned parents. At least half of my daughter’s friends have been handed a smart phone with no limits and no parental oversight.
Personally, we’ve told our kids they can’t have social media accounts until they’re 16, but that doesn’t keep them from all the videos their friends show them, and more importantly – the culture that social media is creating around them.
I wish we could take a few steps back from (or just pause) the technology we’ve unleashed into the world. What if there was a process for determining where and how it can be beneficial (similar to the FDA’s evaluation/ approval for new medication)? And building a process for implementing parameters when peer-reviewed literature substantiates harm? Instead we’ve opened Pandora’s box, and the technology is outpacing our ability to apply it healthily. Now, as soon as it’s developed, the public (including children) gains access, and there is no recourse when it causes harm.
Obviously this is a nuanced issue, and I’m not arguing for a nanny state. But as I tell my kids: Until you can show me evidence that the benefit outweighs the harm, we’re not inviting it into our kids’ lives. They have enough challenges to deal with. If having “strict/boring” parents is one of them, that’s a right of passage I can live with.
The Digital Economic Divide
A comment from “X” in New England (emphasis mine):
I have a 13 year old boy who just started 8th grade in a very economically stratified school.
Among the kids of parents in science, tech and higher ed, many of the kids don’t have phones. Apple Watches with a simple cell plan for texting are pretty common. A few kids have phones, but very locked down/no social media.
A lot of other kids have had phones and social media since 4th or 5th grade – well before age 13. In 6th & 7th grade (again, well before age 13), there were a lot of classroom distractions because of phones, like kids posting TikToks in the middle of classes. Amazingly, the school administration did nothing to little to stop it.
The real digital divide in our community seems to be that upper income/education families are opting out, while lower income kids are getting a lot of phone/screen time.
An Impossible Situation
A comment from “JD” in Rhode Island, US (emphasis mine):
My 12 year daughter attends a school where the parents have actively resisted giving kids smartphones. Yet they still often have Apple watches or in my daughter’s case, a Light phone (only texts and calls) so that we can contact her. (Remember many families don’t have landlines any more! Until she got the Light phone, there was no way for her to call 911 while at home alone.) However, when she went to day camp this summer, she said every single kid her age had a smartphone and instead of socializing they looked at their phones. Since she did not have one, she was completely isolated. This is the situation I imagine most middle school girls are in. Without a phone: pure social isolation. With a phone: distraction and anxiety. It’s an impossible situation.
Wrapping Up
The Harvard study by Anne Becker on the impact of Western media on body image and eating disorders in Fiji serves as a powerful reminder of mass media’s profound influence on well-being.
The parallels between this study and the present-day epidemic of social media-induced anxiety highlight the enduring nature of this issue.
Our politicians and business and health leaders still refuse to establish a clear link between the rise of anxiety and depression and the impact of smartphones and social media. At least that’s the case today. We have been wasting so much time creating adequate protections for our young ones online – and raising awareness about the dark side of tech and social media for people young and old. If you are interested in this issue and want to dig deeper into studies about the deleterious effects of social media/tech on young people’s mental health, I highly recommend Jon Haidt’s Substack.
The apathy has to stop here and now.
We need to create a movement, to build awareness and momentum around these issues. This newsletter is my act of resistance and my little contribution.
If you are equally concerned about the unbridled nature of technology and social media, how they are impacting our lives, please share this with people you care about.
#AnneBecker #comparisonAnxiety #Fiji #health #mediaConsumption #mediaLiteracy #mentalHealth #socialMedia
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"To keep us addicted, many of the websites and apps we use fuel the same neural circuitry used by cocaine and slot machines.
But RSS feeds allow you to consume content in a way that's free from any distractions or sneaky cocaine strategies.They allow you to see only the content you want to read right there in the feed, in its entirety, and without all the fancy ads or triggering comments."
https://openrss.org/blog/rss-feeds-may-be-better-for-your-mental-health
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The real enemy of a Realist isn’t Big Tech… It’s Indifference https://therealists.org/?p=7755
I recently had a powerful epiphany: all the research and the work I had been doing for The Realists had the framing all wrong.
For years, I had been thinking that my “enemy”, my nemesis, adversary – however you want to call it – was Big Tech… the companies that have built systems of surveillance capitalism and are profiting from it. The platforms promoting unattainable beauty and life ideals. The popular apps that are addictive by design.
But no, I now realize I had it all wrong.
The real “enemy” is indifference – people’s indifference to the monumental changes brought on by Big Tech. What they are doing to our humanity. How they are changing what we value. How we see ourselves. Our dreams and aspirations. How we socialize. How we raise our kids.
Big Tech will continue to keep a powerful hold on our lives if we think that “the toothpaste is already out of the tube”, that the changes are inevitable, and that it’s a good thing to jump on all the latest trends, use the most popular apps, under the belief that they will make our lives better.
Media Consumption
I find it astonishing that nowadays people worldwide spend an average of 455 minutes per day consuming media – that’s 7.58 hours a day. And yet, most people have a vague understanding of the effects of media on their lives, self-esteem and worldview.
My interest in the subject? I have a Bachelor of Science degree in Mass Communication and I still vividly remember concepts from my college classes about “Persuasion and Public Opinion” and “Media Effects.”
For example, are you familiar with any of these media theories? “Agenda setting” and “Gatekeeping”? “Cultivation Theory”? The “Magic Bullet Theory”?
I learned about these theories many years ago and today the media landscape is completely different. There are now powerful communication devices in everyone’s pocket… and they are being used extensively, for most of people’s waking lives, without much thought about it.
I notice indifference… and I also notice – and experience – resistance to tech resistance. What do I mean by that? I have the perfect example from my personal life.
Resistance to (Tech) Resistance
I’m the mom of a two-year-old daughter.
I have been called a “Taliban” “Putin” and an “extremist” for wanting to raise her screen-free, without any visual media except for interactive FaceTime videos with her grandparents who live far away. (Incidentally, that’s what the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends, but to some people, it appears to be extreme).
It’s ironic that I’m a filmmaker – but my child has never watched a video in her life. To her, a phone is something that stays in the back pocket; an iPad is a magical portal for video calls with her grandparents. I don’t own a TV and aside from iPad video calls her screen time is exactly 0 minutes a day. She’s 26 months old. And I wouldn’t do things any other way.
Thankfully the colorful nicknames/insults came from one person and they have been toned down since that person watched a documentary on the effects of screen time on young children’s brain development.
These nicknames may sound a bit harsh, but in several situations, with other adults around me and my child, I have noticed similar attitudes. Resistance to my resistance.
I’ve been told that it would be impossible to handle my child on the plane without a tablet or smartphone… and yet she aced her first flights, entertained by her parents, her favorite books and a teddy bear.
I’ve been called “excessive” for voicing my concerns about screen time and reading “too many books” to my child. I was warned I would ruin her eyes with books.
I’ve been advised not to talk about how I raise my child screen-free lest I offend other parents and grandparents who do things differently.
But I think it’s important to share my experiences, to show that there is another way.
Thankfully my husband is on the same page as me, wanting to raise her like we were raised. Think: a childhood like we had in the 1980s – minus television, plus an iPad only for FaceTime calls.
Who’s Raising the Kids?
I have been closely following the work of Dr. Susan Linn for years – a psychologist who founded the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. I have interviewed her for my documentary The Illusionists and I recently read her powerful new book Who’s Raising the Kids? Big Tech, Big Media, and the Lives of Children.
Dr. Linn writes:
You’re dealing with a culture dominated by multinational corporations spending billions of dollars and using seductive technologies to bypass parents and target children directly with messages designed — sometimes ingeniously — to capture their hearts and minds. And their primary purpose is not to help kids lead healthy lives or to promote positive values or even to make their lives better. It’s to generate profit.
Later in the book, she adds:
Traditionally, for kids having what Winnicott might call “good enough” childhoods, the adults with whom they mostly interacted, and who had the most influence over them, were parents, other caregivers, and teachers. They were all familiar family or community members who were at least supposed to have children’s interests at heart. For better or worse, it’s common to raise children to be wary of strangers. Yet in a digitized, commercialized culture, we blithely turn vast portions of a child’s day over to strangers. We don’t see these people. Our kids never meet them. But these strangers know an enormous amount about our children. They know how to capture their attention, to exploit their vulnerabilities, and to trigger their longings. These are the strangers who own, manufacture, and advertise the apps, toys, and games that occupy children’s time and whose jobs demand that they develop and market products that generate big bucks regardless of their impact on the kids who use them.
Instant Gratification and Continuous Distraction
What worries me the most about the shifts brought on by this brave new technological world is this: the internet, smartphones and apps have created a frictionless world of instant gratification and constant distraction.
Are you bored? Fish your phone out of your pocket and you can scroll social media, listen to any song you may think of courtesy of Spotify or watch a video on YouTube.
Do you feel lonely? A couple of taps on the phone and you could communicate with a friend or see what they have posted on social media. Turn on the TV, keep it on in the background, and feel like you are not home alone.
Hungry? A meal can be delivered to your door in 30 minutes or less, courtesy of an app.
Everyday activities that take actual effort are starting to be frowned upon.
Silence and time away from a screen may make certain people uncomfortable.
Technology sweeps in, allowing people to never feel bored and giving them the illusion of connection… and handing them any object they may desire, delivered straight to their doors.
When it comes to spending time with a small child, many adults default to entertaining children with screens… not really thinking about the consequences of screen time and the content they will consume. These devices take away all the effort – but they also take away human connection and the opportunity for a child to develop their curiosity.
I can understand why people do this. Smartphones and tablets have been around for less than 20 years and to hundreds of millions of people they still have a magical aura around them. That’s why it’s so hard for adults to see them in a critical light. Dissenting voices are a minority. Tech giants spend a fortune in marketing their shiny devices and platforms. And – this is key – most people equate technology with progress and modernity – positive things. But media consumption and screen time carry consequences.
Dr. Linn writes in her book:
Today, children’s opportunities for silence — to experience wonder but also to play, dream, and explore — are rare. […] It was a long – ago conversation with Fred Rogers that first got me thinking about the importance of silence in children’s lives. Silence was so important to him that he once used an egg timer to tick off a whole minute of it on his television show. And after listening to cellist Yo-Yo Ma play his cello, Fred commented, “After you’ve heard someone play beautiful music, sometimes you just like to have a quiet time to remember it. Let’s just sit and think about what we’ve heard.”
The Universal Need for Media and Digital Literacy
I think media literacy AND digital literacy classes should be mandatory… not just for young people but also for all educators, parents, grandparents and caretakers. For all humans, really.
Because if you are a parent or grandparent and you read this sentence by Dr. Linn, wouldn’t you start to care?
It became clear to me that the problem with the tech-driven, omnipresent marketing that kids experience today isn’t just that they’re being sold stuff. It’s that the values, conventions, and behaviors embraced and engendered by gargantuan, minimally regulated, for-profit conglomerates permeate all aspects of society, including the lives of children.
I think they would. And they may think twice before handing their toddler a tablet or putting them in front of a TV.
The Lumineers’ song “Stubborn Love” goes: “The opposite of love’s indifference. So pay attention now…”
The ways in which technology has invaded the lives of small children – with most people accepting this uncritically – is just an example of indifference to Big Tech. I think it’s a particularly salient example because it powerfully affects a new generation.
How do we counteract indifference to Big Tech?
Through education. Media literacy AND digital literacy.
If you haven’t already, I would highly encourage you to read the late Neil Postman’s book Technopoly and Dr. Linn’s Who’s Raising the Kids? Listen to podcasts such as The Ezra Klein Show or Offline with Jon Favreau. And don’t be afraid to be different. To resist.
At the end of Technopoly Neil Postman writes:
A resistance fighter understands that technology must never be accepted as part of the natural order of things, that every technology—from an IQ test to an automobile to a television set to a computer—is a product of a particular economic and political context and carries with it a program, an agenda, and a philosophy that may or may not be life-enhancing and that therefore require scrutiny, criticism, and control. In short, a technological resistance fighter maintains an epistemological and psychic distance from any technology, so that it always appears somewhat strange, never inevitable, never natural.
I encourage you to re-read Postman’s powerful words slowly, carefully.
And then spend a minute thinking about them – à la Fred Rogers.
“Let’s just sit and think about what we’ve heard.”
#BigTech #children #digitalLiteracy #DrSusanLinn #FredRogers #indifference #mediaConsumption #mediaLiteracy #mediaTheory #NeilPostman #parenting #screenTime #Technopoly #WhoSRaisingTheKids
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“the rewatching experience allowed them to appreciate how much they had grown.”
