Screen Time: You Get What You Give
To quote prolific 90’s band New Radicals, “We only get what we give.” Now, whether you have the dreamer’s disease or not, this statement holds true and is the perfect conclusion to our blog series on screen time. No one ever expects the double New Radicals reference.
Over the course of this blog series, we have not only defined “screen time,” but we’ve also explained the “Algorithm” and how you can control it. Hopefully those articles gave you the base knowledge you needed to understand our dissections of Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube and TikTok. But if this is your first visit to Blogfyre or your first read of this blog series, let me get you caught up: screen time equals value.
Those four words can sum up the inner workings of the entire internet. To expand those four words and say them in a different order: the amount of screen time you dedicate to an app or site is how that app or site quantifies and understands you as a user. Beyond in-app behavior, it is your time that social sites and apps value the most. That’s all well and good, but how does it pertain to the New Radicals? Good question.
I harken back to this 90s anthem because its title is equally true to social media as it is to slammin’ 90s post-grunge alternative. If you want [insert social media here] to value your posts and give you the screen time of its users, you need to give some of your screen time to the [insert social media here.] Scroll your feed, upload natively, engage with content you like, you know, use the damn thing.
I am constantly shocked by the expectations of potential clients. Folks will come to me and say, “Hey Matt, can Bahnfyre PR make my video on social media go viral?” and I’ll respond with “No, but I can teach you how to build up to consistent engagement and growth!” and they’ll say, “Great! But I never want to have to open the app or post anything myself.”
You’re shooting yourself in the foot, full stop.
When it comes to screen time, we only get what we give. Social media outlets like high value users and will invest in them. For instance, I spend hours every day scrolling my personal Instagram, but I only post to it once every six months or so. Despite my infrequent and inconsistent posting schedule, I average around 11% engagement. A friendly reminder that the average engagement across social media is between 1% and 3.5%.
Even though I post so rarely, Instagram still considers me a high value user because I spend time on the app. I engage with posts in my feed. I follow and unfollow new accounts regularly. I flip through stories a few times a day. I am the perfect user. It’s easy to forget, but social media sites don’t actually have a reason to prioritize creators. Heavy users drive ad revenue, creators just add fuel to the fire. Sure, you can say an outlet is nothing without creator content, but the reality is creator content is a dime a dozen. Outlets don’t really want more creators, they want more users.
I say this at the conclusion of this series because nothing you do for your content matters if you aren’t willing to play the game. I always recommend my clients target their efforts to outlets they’re passionate about interacting with. If you hate using TikTok, uploading a video from your desktop once a day won’t get you anywhere. If you love scrolling LinkedIn every morning, you’ll find more success on that platform, despite what I said about it being difficult to grow there. If you give screen time to your outlet of choice, it will pay you back in kind, guaranteed.
Thanks for coming along on this journey with me! Writing this blog series about screen time has been an absolute pleasure and something that (clearly) I’m very passionate about. The next step for this series is to condense it down into an ebook-type thing. You’ll soon be able to find that over in Free Stuff.
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Until next time,
