Social media users living life “one mile wide and one inch deep”
A national survey of nearly 2000 16- to 30-year-olds commissioned by digital publisher Sound Alliance has found that “pervasive” social media use is saturating users with information, giving users only a narrow grasp of events.
Skimming the surface
''They have so much information coming in through aggregation, principally Facebook, that they are working very hard to keep up with the constant flow,'' says Stig Richards, the creative director at Sound Alliance.
''So they aren't able to attribute time and energy into specific passions, to the extent that maybe people could before social media was so pervasive. The youth of today are living their lives one mile wide and one inch deep.''
The survey found that over half got their news from social media, rather than TV or newspapers. 93 percent used Facebook daily, and 80 percent said they had not yet found a passion or purpose in life, but were still searching for it.
''They may not have the same passionate views about individual things that we had, like the Vietnam War, but they're very broad-minded,'' said Jenna Price, Journalism and social media lecturer from the University of Technology, Sydney.
She added that because many young people get news through Facebook, ''that doesn't mean it's all about Kim Kardashian''.
''Google has made us all different anyhow, in our thinking - it's changed all generations, not just young people. I don't know that that's a bad thing,''