The Business Model of Social Media and the Influence of Marketing on Consumer Well-Being
A Dissertation written in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Master of Science in Impact-Driven Business and Investment at Glasgow Caledonian New York College.
Photo by Kiki Van Son
I once read a quote from the author Annie Dillard that I never forgot.
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
More and more, I find I’m spending my days on my smartphone.
I consider how it starts: I reach for my phone first thing in the morning, and after swiping off the alarm, I unlock the screen, flip through to Gmail, pull up the app and kill some minutes minimizing my inbox. I am not even reading emails, just archiving all the junk—hypnotized by that left sweeping motion that’s become so familiar – and feels so good. In the corporate world, they call tending to emails in this manner “email addiction.” It’s a form of spending time on quicker but more menial tasks, which consequently releases dopamine in our brains to make us feel as if we’re accomplishing something (Hougaard, Carter, 2018).
I’m a digital marketer, which makes me more aware than the average “user” of the ways in which I interact with media. Still, I give in daily to the mechanisms at play which battle for, and successfully direct, my attention in certain ways.
Photo by Katie Henry
My particular concern in the world of today’s media is that of social media.
I am both a consumer who uses social media personally, and a marketer who uses social media professionally as a communications tool for businesses.
In my experience, social media platforms benefit me the marketer more than they benefit me the consumer.
The presence of advertisements makes it so social media platforms are free to consumers, but this comes at a hidden cost.
Consumers who do not have the perspective of social media as a marketing channel are less likely to perceive the negative externalities of a social networking service built on advertising revenue.
As a marketer caught in the middle, I feel a responsibility to balance out the value exchange between social media companies and consumers by directing people’s attention away from what they see on social media, toward how they interact with social media, and why they find themselves there.
I hope to help consumers reclaim their time by developing personal strategies that disrupt the business of social media through increased awareness of how one’s time is being spent on the platforms, and a reevaluation of one’s feelings associated with their social media use.