The most heated invention of our current generation is social media.
Is social media useful? Is it causing emotional distancing within family and friends? The amount of anxiety and resulting depression that social media is bringing and what not.
Social media has been a curse and blessing to all of us for various obvious reasons.
But in this post, I am not going to talk about any of those things.
In this post, I am going to tell you a big secret about us and social media.
A secret that is too obvious but still unknown to us.
Social Media
I am not going to explain to you what social media is or what it is not because you guys use it every day and know much more than there can be explained.
So social media let us connect with the whole world in various forms that are either through pictures, posts, videos, tweets, and whatnot.
It’s fun, it’s cool and the best part is, most of it is free.
No membership is needed; no payment needs to be done.
But then if Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other social media platforms are free for users then how do they run these platforms?
How do they earn and how it is possible for them to support and keep updating these platforms?
How social media earns?
As I said earlier these platforms are free, so there must be huge running and maintaining costs involved.
So how do they earn because they don’t take money from us for using them?
Some of you may know the answers and some of you may not.
But even though you know the answer, I would request you to read this article through as it might provide some insights that you were not aware of.
So, the answer is through advertisements.
You see advertisements on each social media platform in some or another way.
Some of these ads are of some specific products, some services, some courses, and some of the advertisements are of the other users (creators) of the social media.
What’s the secret?
Yes, this is not a secret that we see advertisements on various social media platforms and they earn through it.
Then what the secret is?
The secret is that you are not the consumers for these social media platforms but the product.
Let me repeat that: You, me, and all of us are not the consumers of the social media platforms but we are the products…
Still unsure? read this post further and that will help you understand this.
Have you ever thought about how these social media platforms acquire these companies to put advertisements on their platform? how do they compete with one another? how do they sell their platform to advertisers?
You may have not because you were too occupied in enjoying the instant gratification that you were receiving from social media.
But you should think about it now. because your data, your personal details like search history, likes, dislikes, comments, photos, videos, and interests are being used by these social media giants as products.
These social media platforms pitch the number of monthly visitors and users of their platforms to the advertisers, they compete with each other on the basis of the same number and the platform with the higher number wins bigger brands and better prices.
But who is at loss? Us… because our data, our privacy is being compromised.
Some companies have developed such complex and advanced algorithms that they can predict our purchase habits and decisions more precisely than we can imagine.
And this is not just limited to social media platforms; it is the same with eCommerce platforms.
What do you think, why do big brands associate with eCommerce giants like Amazon when they have their own websites where they can sell their products without any commission?
The reason is these eCommerce platforms have huge monthly traffic, successful sales history, and a big customer base and this is the product that the big brands want to leverage.
All in all, no doubt social media has brought the world closer, it has helped us solve many problems but at the same time, it has given birth to a whole new age of problems. Problems that may not look big at the individual level but collectively it scales to an epidemic.
So, whenever we are on social media, whenever we share something, we say something, we talk with one another, we see some posts, videos or pictures, we should be cautious and aware of these facts that we are the products and what js being shown to us night not be the entirety true or factful. it’s a part of some advertising campaign, sone result of a complex and advanced algorithm.
So instead of reacting, think and respond.
Remember, we still have control in our hands, for now, if we don’t become aware and cautious soon we will lose control and there will be a whole new age of social media influencing society.
