The screentime paradox
Take a look at the (black) mirror
Social media is bad for us and Americans know it. But it’s an addiction that Americans can’t, and don’t want to, quit.
Even if they haven’t read the scientific papers (who has the attention span to do that anymore, anyway?), people know innately they weren’t meant to spend their lives online. When asked about whether they believe that the overall impact of social media on society will be positive or negative, voters say negative. Voters aren’t necessarily concerned about phones as a technology (they give cell phones a net +61 rating), but they understand that there is something uniquely dark about social media.
Dim views of social media’s impact on society do not affect the amount of time that voters tend to spend scrolling. A plurality of voters overall (34%) report spending multiple hours a day scrolling on social media and another 22% say they spend about an hour each day on the activity. Importantly, we specified time on social media rather than time on their phones in general so voters are likely spending more time on their phones in general every day doing non-social media tasks and activities.
Voters aged 35-49 (50%), voters under 35 (41%), and women (39%) are the most likely to say that they spend multiple hours a day scrolling on social media. These demographic groups have very negative attitudes towards social media’s impact on society (net -11, net -12, and net -9, respectively), yet they still spend a significant portion of each day on the platforms.
Interestingly, negative perceptions of social media and high social media use do not lead voters to wish they spent less time scrolling. A plurality of voters across demographic lines agree that they are comfortable with their phone usage. A majority (57%) of voters aged 35-49 answer that they are content with their screen time, despite half of this demographic spending multiple hours a day on social media. A similar pattern occurs among women, 64% of whom report satisfaction with their scrolling behavior despite high levels of social media use.
While voters are much more likely to say they wish they spent less time on their phones rather than more, the broad complacency with their digital and technological habits is a cause for alarm.
Attitudes towards social media usage are eerily similar to attitudes held by smokers in the 1970s as the tide turned on cigarette use. A report conducted in 1978 by the Roper Organization on behalf of the Tobacco Institute found that Americans overwhelmingly believed smoking was dangerous but only 29% of smokers answered that they would ‘very much like to quit.’
A large majority (61%) of Americans said that any amount of smoking was harmful to someone’s health and nearly another third (31%) said heavy smoking had negative impacts. Yet, even as 92% of Americans agreed that cigarettes caused health issues, smokers did not feel a sense of urgency in quitting their cigarette habits. Nearly a third (31%) showed no interest in quitting and another third (32%) answered that they would “sort of like to quit.” In fact, the report for the Tobacco Institute makes clear that the industry should not yet panic because “while the overwhelming majority of the public has been convinced by the anti-smoking forces that smoking is dangerous to the smoker’s health, this has not persuaded very many smokers to give up smoking.”
Now, with nearly fifty years of hindsight, the general public can agree that smoking has harmed millions of Americans and continues to kill more than 480,000 Americans every year. The government has taken countless steps to address cigarette use, including spending hundreds of millions of dollars on education and prevention. But public health professionals are still playing catch-up: In 2022, the CDC spent nearly $250 million on national ad campaigns and tobacco prevention grants; the tobacco industry spent $8 billion on advertising and promoting their products.
Hindsight is 20/20. Lawmakers should heed the lessons from widespread cigarette addictions in the 20th century and get ahead of what may already be a full-blown crisis.
You can view the full toplines from this poll here. You can view the crosstabs here.
The key bedrock issue with social media—which is central to why it even exists—is the monetization of our data. We are now like cattle, being led to the milking barn. For some governments (e.g., China, Russia, Iran, etc.) the collection and analysis of this data is part of ensuring that the government stays in power. One can image a similar future after another trump-like president here in the U.S. Alternatively, if the U.S. and other western governments were to strictly regulate the collection and use of our personal data, then it seems obvious that much of the harmful aspects of social media would quickly evaporate. The regulation of big data, especially with the integration of AI, should be a cornerstone platform issue for the Democrat Party. Addressing this issue will quickly reveal that the only entities in opposition are those who profit from collecting, agglomerating, and selling this data, which would further benefit the Democratic Party, as it (hopefully) strategizes on reining-in these oligarchs.