Is Social Media Hospitable?
An essay(?) by Program Director, Justin Garcidiaz.
What do you mean I have to use social media? Says who?
I get it. For the past at least 15 years social media use has felt ubiquitous, even essential to everyday life. But there was, in fact, a time which existed before social media. It’s not like we – individuals and small businesses – just blinked to life in 2010 when Instagram launched. Many of us, I’d dare say millions, can even remember that time when social media wasn’t a “thing,” but now, almost two decades later, we’re walking around, staring into our phones at the constant stream of social media apps, while the news is full of reports about all the negative effects of this usage has on our lives.
So…why? Why do I have to use social media? I remember a time when it didn’t exist, so I know that all the functions it serves are still attainable without it. I know how bad it is for mental health, for culture, for teen girls, for spreading disinformation. And thanks to screen time-tracking apps, I know how much time is wasted on each individual platform. So, again, why? Why do I have to use it? Why, if I’m a small business owner, do I have to use it to sell my business?
I’m not going to bother to “both sides” the argument. I’m not going to balance my position with all the virtues of social media in an attempt to appear unbiased because I am biased, and quite frankly, if you’re looking for a fair and balanced analysis of the pros and cons here, you can go elsewhere; this won’t be that. Social media companies have proven time and time again that they too are biased – against us, their users. They have shown nothing but contempt for their clientele. They know they’re abusing their consumers, gleefully causing harm to us as individuals and as a society, and they laugh in our faces about it. So I’m not going to waste my time trying to balance my argument with favorable pontifications about how they’re in any way good or useful or altruistic or even inherently necessary at all because they’re not. They are not necessary in the sense that we couldn’t possibly function without them. We did before, and we can again.
Right now, about 96% of small and medium businesses engage in social media marketing. Most of that is done through Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn (and probably TikTok, but that one is a little up in the air right now). And while it’s hard to say exactly what portion of resources are being allocated to this form of marketing, with 82% of all consumer internet traffic going to social media platforms, it’s probably safe to assume that businesses are going to be investing a significant portion of their resources in them. But how effective this is is incredibly hard to say. There’s no meaningful way of determining how the ROI of social media marketing works for your company. Say you spend 5 hours per week posting and engaging on social media for your business. Could you say with any degree of certainty how many revenue dollars that translates to? Probably not. What about if you employ a full time social media manager? Are you actually able to calculate whether or not their salary is being offset by consumer engagement and dollars spent? Probably not.
The problem is that social media – from the consumer’s standpoint – is a mostly passive activity. Just think about all the time you spend simply scrolling through Instagram, not clicking on anything, not buying anything, certainly not logging off and going out to spend money at the businesses you’re following. You’re window shopping – walking through a virtual mall but not going into any of the stores. Every time your favorite local restaurant posts a picture of a dish, you “like” it, but did you eat it? Did you go there and purchase that item from the menu and enjoy the experience of eating it in the restaurant? Probably not.
Perhaps as a business owner you look at your follower count and consider that a decent measurement of whether or not your investment in social media marketing is paying off. You have 1,000, 5,000, 10,000 followers and think “wow, I’m killing it! People love us!” but then you look at the books and wonder why you’re barely squeaking by. If only those 10,000 people came into your restaurant or shop. How many of your followers even could? How many of them are local vs spread all across the country, or even the world? How many people followed your restaurant because they saw your name on the James Beard Award list or in an Eater article and clicked “follow” but have never, and probably will never, come visit your restaurant? What good is a follower if they’re not a consumer? Sure, we all like the validation of having thousands of followers, but validation doesn’t pay your staff or the utilities companies or the vendors and purveyors. That dopamine hit you got when you saw your follower count go up won’t mean much if you can’t keep the lights on. And sure, having more followers means you can game the algorithm and reach a wider audience. But again, what good is a wider audience if they’re miles away with no meaningful way to support your business?
Certainly someone must be benefiting from all the time and resources we’re investing in social media marketing, right? Right – but it's probably not you, and it’s probably not the kind of person who needs more money. Meta, TikTok, X, they all get their money through ad revenue. Social media users will see a sponsored ad for a thing on, say Instagram, click it and buy whatever the thing is, and *cha ching* a billionaire somewhere gets his wings or whatever. But billionaires don’t need more money. You know who needs more money? You do! Your team does. Your community does. Your local businesses and restaurants and neighbors need more money. Billionaires have enough money, it’s right there in the name. We need this to work so our businesses can make more money, and they’ve convinced us that social media marketing is supposed to help with that, but is it?
Maybe you’re thinking, “but I never buy things I see advertised on Instagram.” Hooray for you, I applaud your avoidance of the siren call of targeted advertising. But guess what? You’re still feeding the beast. *whispers sharply* They’re stealing your data and selling it! That’s right, you may not be buying anything through your clicks, but your clicks are providing data, and that data is worth money. Who you are, where you are, what you look at, how long you look at what you look at, all of that is valuable data that these companies are collecting and selling to the highest bidder. So even when you don’t want to be, you’re commodifying yourself so these tech CEOs can get richer and richer while your business continues to struggle. So keep not buying things all you want, you’re still being bought and sold left and right.
You *didn’t* read it here first folks: Social Media is Harming Our Culture. That’s right, surprising absolutely no one, social media has been linked to increased rates of anxiety and depression, suicide, body image issues, attention span decline, cyberbullying, disinformation, and at least a couple really questionable presidential elections. Fact: Suicide rates among teens were up 150% between 2009 and 2019. One hundred fifty per cent! That’s not even how “per cent” is supposed to work! Social media platforms are designed to exploit the brain's dopamine reward system, similar to gambling, making it addictive. Social media users report feeling lonelier than ever, and the rise in social media use correlates with a decline in face-to-face interactions by 40% since the early 2000s. One in three divorces now cite Facebook or Instagram as contributing factors. False news travels 6 times faster than real news on X, and studies show that false political ads on Facebook reached 10 million people during the 2020 election alone.
If appealing to your morality doesn’t work, perhaps an appeal to your vanity will. Look in the mirror. Bags under your eyes? Constant downward gazing – like when you scroll Instagram all day – leads to premature wrinkles and sagging skin, too. In fact, looking down at your phone adds up to 60 lbs of pressure to your neck, leading to chronic pain, spinal misalignment, and early arthritis. Repetitive scrolling causes tendonitis and trigger thumb, where the thumb locks in place because of overuse. Do you lay in bed and scroll? The blue light emitted from screens suppresses melatonin production, which disrupts healthy sleep, which shrinks grey matter in the brain, which affects memory, focus and emotional regulation. It’s also bad for your eyes – reducing blink rates by 66%, leading to dry eyes, eye fatigue, and long-term damage to the retina and early-onset macular degeneration and blindness. Check your TikTok while you’re on the throne? Sitting on the toilet for extended periods of time significantly increases the risk of developing hemorrhoids. If we keep it up, we’ll be a species of blind, gnarled, unhappy Quasimodos!
Should I go on? I could, but I probably don’t need to. The moral injury of knowing all these statistics and (admittedly cherry picked) factoids is enough to weigh heavily on our conscience. What does it do to your psyche to knowingly use something so terribly harmful, but then use it anyway, despite the harm and despite the knowledge of it? Can you honestly say that you’re able to live in integrity with your values and morals if you know all this, but use social media anyway? I’m not trying to make you feel guilty, but I would encourage you to at least think about that. Be curious. Think critically about how social media use has affected you, your loved ones, your community, and your business. I’m not saying you have to stop immediately – heck, quitting any addiction is hard – but maybe just…think about it?
There. We know it’s harmful. We know it's exploitative. We know it’s very likely a waste of time from a marketing standpoint. Now what do we do? What did we do before all this – before social media got its hooks in us? The first step is…Subscribe. Subscribe to IRL. Make the commitment, here and now, to engage with the world around you, rather than simply peer at it through the window of your phone. Everywhere we turn, we’re inundated with messages about the loneliness epidemic and the urgent need for community. Stop talking about it and be about it. Subscribe to real life! What do the kids say – go touch grass? Do that. Join a club or community organization. If you’re a business owner, join local business associations, chambers of commerce, or trade groups. Attend local events, fairs, and networking meetups. Pick one club, group or association that is relevant to your business and commit to going to a meeting.
Look for ways to collaborate, rather than compete. Much has been said about the role of competition in our economic system, but somehow we all got hung up on the notion that competition means that for you to have some, others must have less. That scarcity mindset isn’t helping anyone and it doesn’t have to be that way. “Competition” can simply mean “variety,” it can mean more options for more consumers and can lead to the rising tide that lifts all boats. Sure, if you own a restaurant it would probably be nice to be the only restaurant in town, but since you’re not the only restaurant in town, it might be better to try to look at your peers as collaborators rather than competitors. More restaurants in the community means more options for consumers which means more consumers willing to go out and try new restaurants in the community which means more restaurants can thrive. Look for ways you and the “competition” can work together. Reach out to local businesses in your industry and talk to them about what they need. Chances are, it’s all the same things you need and knowing that can help you explore ways to get those needs met together. You’re already sharing the same customer base, whether you’ve admitted that or not, so why not capitalize on that by cross promoting each other’s businesses. Advertise for one another by spreading the word. Create incentives and events to draw in new customers. Pop up at trade shows or markets. Do collabs, organize “business crawls” for the community – people love a map with stickers from each business they visit! Spend money at your “competitor’s” businesses. Show up for each other.
Invest in old fashioned, boots on the ground style marketing. Sure, posting a pretty photo on Instagram is nice, but are you just shouting into the void? If you live in a city with a strong urban core, you’re probably seeing a lot of real estate development. You know who lives in apartment buildings? Customers. Reach out to the 3 closest new builds and talk to their property management team. They’re always looking for ways to engage their residents. Maybe you host an event in their building or create a promotion for them. Imagine you’re a small yoga studio next to a new high rise condo – what if you host a Saturday morning yoga class in their community room and then offer a 10% discount to residents who sign up for studio memberships? Maybe the buildings agree to put up a poster or a stack of postcards or pin a flyer to their community bulletin board. It's a start, and if it turns into a dollar earned for your business, at least you can say it wasn’t a dollar you had to share with Mark Zuckerberg and doesn’t that feel nice?
What do you care about? The environment? Reproductive rights? Sustainable farming? Jesus? Doesn’t really matter what it is, I bet there’s an organization that supports it out there. Find it, reach out to it, and see how you can help. If the average salary for a social media manager is costing you $62k per year, that’s about $1300 per week give or take. What if you invested that $1300 into an event with a charity or organization aligned with your values? Not only would that make you feel good about having an impact in the world around you, it would also expose your business to like-minded people who will very likely turn around and invest their dollars in supporting you. It’s like a win-win-win!
Look, there aren’t any easy answers but shouldn’t we ask the questions? No matter what you do, you’re going to need to invest time and money into how you market your business and engage with your customers, whether that’s through social media or something else. You don’t have to take my advice, quit social media, and focus your efforts on healthier, more holistic, more community-oriented practices. You also don’t have to maintain the status quo, either. You could continue to use social media until your thumbs fall off and democracy crumbles. Or you could not. Either way, it’s your call. But just…think about it. It doesn’t have to be this way.
