Tag Archives: social media

What the next year will bring

I’m not pretending that I have a crystal ball, and can see into the future, but here are some predictions on the year ahead:

1. Vaccines.

A) In the developed world: despite growing evidence that vaccines are saving lives, there are going to be too many people that choose not to get them and the Delta variant (or another yet to be named variant) will bring prolonged restrictions that the very people refusing to get the vaccine will be the most vocal about.

B) In the developing world: It will be another year from now before many countries have enough vaccines to distribute two shots to every person that wants one… but in some of these countries it will be mandated, and that will be a new front of contention and fear mongering in ‘more free’ countries.

C) Booster shots (a 3rd dose) will not be seriously considered for at least 6 months to a year, if at all… but watch for news as elites decide to get it anyway, and while this won’t influence anti-vaxers to get their shots, many with 2 shots will want the 3rd shot as a security blanket.

2. Conspiracy theories.

These will flourish for two reasons:

A) Social media is too easily exploited by clever use of targeted advertising dollars, and fake news/information travels faster than boring but true facts.

B) The news plays easily into the hands of controversy = clicks = advertising dollars. Example: Share the story of an articulate 22 year-old choosing not to be vaccinated. Let her express her concerns for a minute, give a 30 second response, let her get the last word in. The controversy is more important than the science, and the news cast plays like an anti-vaxer advertisement… for free, with a large audience.

3. American Politics: The next year will decide the 2024 election. It is comical to me that some people still think the last election will be overturned… it won’t. However, I think Trump will make a lot of waves in the next year. While I won’t make a prediction as to weather he rides the wave or sinks, I think contention around the last election will be the counterbalance to Trump’s legal woes, and both of these will play into keeping his name in the news, and on the minds of Americans. If in a year he is not in legal hot water, then be warned that he could be a legitimate candidate in 2024.

4. Climate Change: Freakish weather will make this a hot topic for the next year. That said, not much will change with respect to doing something meaningful about it. Newsworthy, but somehow not change worthy.

5. Cryptocurrency: Countries will begin to adopt their own digital currencies. Paper bills will not be produced by most countries in 5 years, and this will be evident by next summer. Developing countries with massive inflation issues will lead the way.

6. Cancel culture: I’ll end on this, and in all honesty, I think this is a wish more than a prediction. I hope that there is some rebalancing around people being cancelled for poor indiscretions. What I mean by this is that someone saying something stupid can’t be treated as equally vile as someone who commits an evil crime. Human beings make mistakes. Two things matter when those mistakes are made. First, how much harm was caused? Second, what is the response/consequence?

I don’t think public/social media spaces are spaces where restitution and resolutions happen. Instead these sites become cesspools of anger, hate, rage, and an attack on people which prevents conversation and learning. Some of these attacks are worse than the indiscretion, but that doesn’t seem to matter.

I would like to see people provided a chance for redemption, rather than vilification and cancelation. We need to allow for learning and growth.

—–

That’s 5 predictions and a wish. I’ll set a calendar date for a year from now and see how I did.

Habits vs Distractions

The kids that are perfectionists, work for hours on something that was good enough long before they consider the work to be finished.

The kids who loves to do research collect so much of it that it becomes overwhelming.

The kids who are easily distracted spends too much time catching up on work that should already have been handed in, and are perpetually putting off work that should be done now.

The kids that stress about the class they don’t like, spend less time and energy on the classes they enjoy.

The kids that work on more than one thing at once end up doing less of everything as they bounce from task to task.

The kids that should ask the most questions ask half as many as the kids that really don’t need to ask, but want to make sure they understand, or are doing things correctly.

It’s not always a lack of trying, it’s not always a lack of effort. It’s the lack of the understanding of where to put effort, what to do next, when to ask for help, and when to either remove distractions or remove themselves from distraction.

But the good news is that habits are learned. Success can provide as much serotonin and reward stimulus as distractions do… but only if the habits are in place to make the rewards consistent. Otherwise, video games, social media, and the illusion that multitasking is actually a thing, trump the rewards of good habits.

Sometimes we give kids too much choice, too much time, too many extensions. Sometimes what they need are high expectations, and hard deadlines. Sometimes they need a teacher checking in on them, asking to see work in progress, and giving timely and precise feedback. Sometimes kids need teachers to help them with their plan of action, and then hold them accountable to the plan.

Because sometimes the appeal of distractions are too strong, and giving a kid time to choose what they should do next isn’t really giving them a choice. Because sometimes distractions are too strong, and kids are not really choosing, they are falling back in the habit of doing the things that feed their brains with serotonin. They don’t get the same rewards from hard work, because they don’t have the habits to ensure that hard work pays off. Sometimes we need to make the choice for them, then instead of praising the work, we need to ask them how they feel getting the work done. Sometimes we need to help build good habits for them, because the alternative is to let the distractions win.

Social media engagement vs entertainment

For many years social media has been a big part of my life. I’ve used mostly Twitter, but also Facebook and LinkedIn, and to a lesser extent Instagram. I also engage on Snapchat with my family, and I love the creativity of TikTok. But I don’t spend a lot of time on any of these.

Actually, about 3-4 times a week I do go to TikTok and spend a half hour being entertained, but not producing anything, just watching. To me this is more like TV than social media. I don’t watch TV regularly, but I’ll ‘tune in’ to TikTok for 30 minutes, then my phone tells me that I’ve used up all my time. I set the time limit because I found that I could easily switch from 30 minutes of entertainment to an hour plus of wasted time. So, while I engage with TikTok for a few 30 minute stints a week, it’s entertainment rather than engagement. Occasionally I’ll tweet a really clever TikTok.

Beyond that, I really just auto-post my blog to Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, then later that day see if anyone has engaged with those posts. I also respond to any engagement people have with me, such as someone tagging me with @datruss on Twitter. So I go in as an observer, and respond if addressed directly. Yes, I might do a bit more while I’m there, but I’m not usually engaged for more than 5-10 minutes.

This is far less than I used to engage. Twitter was my go-to place to share what I was learning and to read links that inspiring educators shared. I used to be fully engaged with Twitter as a learning tool. But now I listen to audiobooks and podcasts or conversations on ClubHouse. I do this mostly when working out or when in transit, or while doing things like grocery shopping. And social media doesn’t engage my attention too much more than that.

Interestingly, I think what I do on social media is still a lot compared to others in my age bracket. I don’t pretend that I’m not using these tools at all, or that they don’t take any of my time… they just take less time than they used to.

I remember a conversation with someone about my time spent on social media, and this person spent no time on any of the tools and was questioning how I found the time? I asked if he watched TV? Was he a sports fan and did he watch sports on TV? Did he watch the news? The answers were yes, yes, and yes, and he easily consumed more television than I consumed social media. I could include my daily writing here on my blog and the math still leaned in the direction of more time spent by him on television than me on social media.

But if I’m honest, minus this blog I’ve been using social media more for entertainment than engagement, consumption rather than production. It has been a slow shift over the past few years. This is an observation not a call to action. I don’t think I’ll be changing this any time soon. That said, producing a daily blog since July 2019 is far more online social sharing than almost anyone I know, so my online engagement is still weighted towards production rather than consumption… And, anyone watching TV for the same amount or more time a week can’t say the same.

Face-to-face Conferences

While I’m looking forward to our Professional Development Day this coming Friday, I wouldn’t be being honest if I said that I wasn’t missing conferences. I’ll be attending from my laptop, alone in my office. I won’t be going to a large auditorium for a keynote, sitting next to friends, making lunch plans, geeking out in conversations with people I don’t usually get to see, making podcasts between sessions… there is a lot of appeal to engaging with connections beyond the sessions you go to at a conference.

For me, it usually includes meeting ‘digital friends’, people that I know from online/Twitter, whom I’ve never met before face-to-face or whom I have met, but less times than I can count on one hand. These connections invariably make the conference great for me. And not only do I get to meet these wonderful people, they tend to be people that like geeking out with me about what we’ve learned. If I go to a mediocre session, no problem, I can chat with someone who went to a better one. Go to a great session, and now I’ve got someone to share it with out loud, to help me solidify what I’ve learned.

But beyond the learning, there is the human connection. There is the opportunity to be with people I don’t get to see often but I enjoy their company. It’s about being with my tribe. I’ll enjoy the sessions on Friday, but I really look forward to a time in the future when I can once again go to a conference, pick up my swag, and connect with people that make the whole conference experience great!

Web advertising vs micropayments

Right now, if you do a Google search for a product like an iPhone, above the link to Apple.com you will see ads to purchase a phone. Those ads are how Google makes its money.

Meanwhile, if the search you are doing isn’t a product, but an idea or concept, then those ads aren’t always about selling something, but rather about sharing content… and that content is usually surrounded by advertising. That’s how a website gets you to look at ads on their page, how they get advertisers to pay them for views and clicks on their pages. This race for your attention is not free, and what you see on the internet, at the top of searches, and on websites next to, above and below, the content you want to see is the price we all pay… the price of our attention.

I think that there is going to be a social media platform that will show up in the next few years that is going to figure out micropayments as a means to share ad-free content. Want to see a news article with no ads? Pay 1/10th of a cent. Find a great article you really enjoyed? Give them a hand clap or two (applause of some sort), each worth 1/10th of a cent. If you really like it, you can share 10 X of your applause… or a whole penny. Enjoying some art shared or creative writing? You decide how much applause to give.

You’ll have people not paying much, but others will be generous. And along with this will come a culture of disliking sites that embed advertising. We will see a lot more ad-free content. News sites might insist on a micropayment. The challenge is how to get people to ‘buy in’ to paying rather than seeing ads. I think this will happen with a social media platform that does 2 things:

1. Charges about $10 to join.

2. Gives you 9,500 ‘points’ to give away. (10,000 times 1/10 of a cent minus a 50 cent or 500 point fee.)

Basically, you will be given the points to give away through applause for websites you like. Because these points will be called something fun besides 1/10th of a cent, and because you get so many of them, you’ll think nothing of sharing a few of them on content you like. When you run low on them, you can purchase another $5, $10, or $20 more, but with a decreasing commission:

$5 gets you 4,250 points

$10 gets you 9,500 points

$20 gets you 19,700 points

The sweet spot will be $10, which isn’t a lot of money if the points last the typical person more than a month.

Some people will use their points miserly, others will spend over $20 a month. Overall, an economy of paying, or rather ‘applauding’ content that is shred ad-free will become something people are happy to do.

It will be interesting to see how micropayments will influence the content that is shared. Will we see sites begging for applause? Viral videos earning more money than advertising could ever get them? Sites donating their applause to charity? There are many ways this format could go, but I think one thing you will see is a genuine hate for websites that share ads embedded in content… and I’m looking forward to this!

2 week social media vacation

I’m removing Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram off of my phone until Sunday February 7th, 2021. That’s two weeks of shutting down the social media tools I engage with on some regular daily or weekly level. Staying on my phone will be WhatsApp and Snapchat because they both have family group chats that I engage with, without having other interactions beyond family.

I will continue to blog every day, and these blog posts will auto-post to Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook (to my Pair-Dimes page, not my personal wall, so please follow if FB is where you usually see my blog posts). Feel free to chat with me in my blog comments, but comments on other platforms won’t be seen by me.

There is no specific reason I’m doing this, other than curiosity. I want to see what I miss, and how I will use my time. I think I’ll end up with more audio book and podcast listening time, and I’m hoping that I’ll write and meditate more. Time will tell.

I actually deleted the Apps Sunday night, and I wrote everything above before going to bed. This morning I realized that one thing I’ll need to think about is how I get news? Normally I start my day in Twitter Search looking at the News tab and trending hashtags to get a sense of what’s happening in the world. This has been my strategy for a couple years because television and radio news are not designed to inform as much as to keep you watching and listening. And while I read some print news on my phone, it tends to be focussed on the coronavirus or US politics these days… and it seems to be more commentary and opinion than actual news.

In the end, I won’t have missed much if I’m tuned out of the news for two weeks. And although I’m not always in the room, my wife does watch evening news on tv. I will survive just fine with less news along with my social media vacation.

Interestingly, I came across some Coronavirus news this morning and did a little math with the stats. It seems that while the US has vaccinated 20.5 million people, Canada has only vaccinated 0.817 million. Looking at populations, my math tells me that the US has vaccinated 6% of their population while Canada has only vaccinated 2%. What’s the first thing I thought of doing with that info? Tweeting it… my social media vacation has already started to curtail my behaviour.

I’ll share my vacation experience and reflections on February 7th.

Who are the Kardashians?

It was September 2011 and I had recently returned from China after living there for 2 years. I had just started working at the adult learning centre and I had a meeting at our Continuing Education head office about a 15 minute drive away. A few minutes into the drive the radio announcer started taking about the Kardashian family. I listened out of interest about who these people might be, and out of shock that there could be a tv show about these people’s ridiculous lives.

I arrived at the centre and after walking into the office with 4 secretaries I had only met a few times, I asked, “Can one of you help me out with something? Who are the Kardashians, and why do I want to keep up with them?” This got a laugh, but not a response. I had to add, “No, really… I’ve been in China for a couple years, I have no idea who they are?”

Their answer didn’t help me. I was completely unaware of this pop culture reference and Bruce Jenner was the only name I had any connection to. Admittedly, I never ended up watching the show, and still don’t really know who they are beyond the name Kim, and that Bruce is now Caitlyn.

I think of this now because I’ve noticed that today there seems to be more and more pop culture references that I don’t get. I don’t watch TV, my Twitter network is mostly educators, and the Facebook and TikTok algorithms know that I’m a 50+ year old dad. I am shielded by an information wall that hides many new pop culture reference. I see memes that reference people I don’t know. I hear names I have to Google. I hear words that don’t mean anything to me.

How good are the algorithms? When I go on TikTok I don’t see a single teenager dancing, but (very) occasionally I see a mom doing the moves their kids do. The only place they get me wrong is that I have to tell them (using the ‘I’m not interested’ feature) to keep creators telling bad dad jokes away.

So it’s not easy keeping up with the modern day Kardashians. The newest cultural references seem to change weekly, and despite not living in a foreign country, I feel like I am missing out on what’s going on in the different and fast changing world. This is especially true with hit songs that seem to get popular on TikTok. They are what we used to call ‘one hit wonders’. Artists who catch a wave of likes thanks to a single use of their song in a TikTok that explodes in popularity, and then the song hits the pop charts. This isn’t always an unknown artist, one 1-minute video brought Fleetwood Mac back to the top of pop charts.

By the time I’ve heard and recognized that it’s a thing, the cultural reference or song is usually almost at the end of its life. So it seems that I’m at an age where I will always be behind and catching up. This realization isn’t going to change what I do going forward, it’s just interesting that a decade ago I had to be literally on the other side of the world to be left in the pop culture dark… And now it seems like a weekly thing, simply because my social media consumption is based on algorithms that are completely different than a younger generation.

Blog comments on social media

This morning I read a comment Aaron shared here on my Daily-Ink, and then commented back on a link he shared.

David, this is a really intriguing question. I reflected upon it last year in response to Tom Webster's blog https://t.co/4Rkdl7U1c3

— Aaron Davis 🏘️ (@mrkrndvs) January 14, 2021

Then I went to Facebook and commented on a post about a friend, George, who shared his healthy living before/now photos showing his progress. He started by saying,

“For the last year, I have been adding a “progress check” to my Instagram stories for my workouts. I have been teased about it, but It was a way for me to see a difference over time when it is hard to notice the impact of your work on a daily basis. Snapshots over time have given me a better idea of my progress.”

My response:

George, this is fantastic! I love seeing progress photos like this. What’s great is that you aren’t just dropping weight, you are creating a healthy lifestyle. As for sharing the photos… GO FOR IT!

Kelly, Jonathan, and I post workouts on Twitter and cheer each other on. I’m sure some people roll their eyes, but I firmly believe that being public pushes us when we need that push. There is both incentive and accountability to being public about our healthy living goals. You look awesome, and you will look awesome a year from now rather than yo-yo-ing… so share away!

💪😃👍

I know that my Healthy Living Goals have been positively impacted by my being open and sharing them publicly on not just my blog, but also on social media.

What I also notice is that I used to get tons of comments on my blog, and now they are all over the place. My blog gets shared to Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn automatically when the post is published, and people will comment and respond on those platforms rather than on my blog. These comments live at a given moment, they don’t live on my blog, connected to my post, like Aaron’s comment(s) do.

Social media timelines scroll past for brief moments in time. You could argue that so do blog posts.. especially when they come daily, but I like the idea that these posts share easily searchable and longer living moments in time. And, if and when I go back to them, I like the idea that the comments are there with the post and not lost on my social media timeline, never to be connected to the post again.

But social media rules the day. I’d probably get 1/10 the readership of my blog if I didn’t post it on social media, and social media is designed to keep you on the platform… to keep you engaged and scrolling, and interacting on the site. I don’t think that will change any time soon.

There have been a couple instances where a blog comment on social media added enough value to the conversation or idea shared in my post that it inspired me to quote that comment myself, in the blog comments. However, it wouldn’t be sustainable for me to try to do that all the time. I don’t really have a solution, I think it’s just a matter of accepting that people will choose to comment on social media sites, and blogs are not as social (anymore).

Like this:

Like this:

Like this:

Like this:

Like this:

Like this:

Like this:

Like this:

Like this:

Like this: