The first thing I do before I completely wake up is press snooze on my alarm as my phone blares the most agonising sound in the world like clockwork, then I immediately check what I’ve missed during my deep slumber on Instagram… then Twitter… then TikTok and even my email! This amount of media consumption isn’t healthy, especially early in the morning, but can you blame me?
In hindsight, there are studies that show how damaging it is checking your phone first thing in the morning as it can increase your stress levels before your day has truly begun!
Social media companies excel on keeping their consumers engaged by incorporating various ways of staying updated. The world of social media has a cyclical structure where almost everything is predictable, trends are like a revolving door and the relaying of news is like an energetic hamster on wheels – it’s constant!
Today my google calendar reminded me of how busy my day is going to be, I mindlessly scroll between Instagram, Twitter and TikTok for what felt like half an hour but honestly, it could’ve been longer, embarrassing I know! During that time, many fashion and makeup advertisements showed up on my social media feeds, which I found intriguing yet creepy because how did the algorithm know that I wanted those exact pair of trainers…
Whilst sitting on the overground on my way to my nail appointment, I kill some time on TikTok, and then I saw a notification from Spotify inviting me to check out my yearly #SpotifyWrapped. Spotify collects data from the music, podcasts and the different genres of both podcasts and music that music users have been listening to all year long. The popular music app calculated the different genres that I continually listened to, my ultimate top song of the year as well as top artists and top five songs of the year.
For the younger generations, in particular Gen Z, Spotify Wrapped is a joyous occasion to find out what musicians defined your year. Spotify relies on their users using social media to share their Spotify Wrapped results which gains an insane amount of traction. Spotify carefully creates playlists that are perfectly curated to the users liking as well as creating playlists with songs that they’d think their audience would like too. Spotify makes this an enjoyable experience by creating personalised playlists for their users through the data they’ve acquired through their loyal customer. The music company uses data to “generate insights that can benefit their business and play a role in enhancing the experience of their customers.”
Cohen shares, “social media offer businesses new boundary-pushing opportunities to tap into people’s online activity by collecting enormous amounts of personal information and seamlessly integrating advertising and social networks.”
Whereas theorist Smythe delves into the capitalist aspect of mass media and how it affects the audience, “pressures for audience-oriented work exerted by Consciousness Industry are relentless”
Out of all the social media platforms, I think Spotify genuinely rewards their users for their labour, which is listening to music or podcasts. The music company rewards their customers by making personalised playlists and a yearly Spotify Wrapped, Spotify rewards their users for being loyal customers and music lovers.I think the mechanisms that Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and Pinterest use is to personalise my algorithms to keep me engaged, by putting mainly fashion, makeup, and nail art on my search page and for you page. Social media can be quite taxing as it is very time consuming, whether as a viewer or a content creator. The people that I engage with on social media use their pages for fashion, makeup and activism, whereas I use mine to interact with my friends and family – I use social media for the fun aspect of it.
