It’s not knew. There is a boom of vloggers, influencers and entertainers on the social media. Especially Youtube and Instagram. These are the top 2 most used apps by Indians right now. I’ll be talking about India only for this article but it is relevant for the entire world, i guess.
There are more than 300 million active Instagram users with avg. 33 mins of usage per day. (For majority teens this must be more than 1hr at least per day)
Then there are more than 460 million active youtube users in India with 1 hour per day average. Out of these 48% are men and 51% are women. A 2023 survey found that 34.5 percent of female internet users aged between 16 and 24 years watch vlogs worldwide. Considering all age groups this might be around 25% females and 20% males. This means around 57 million females and 45 million males watching around an hour of vlogs (2-3 vlogs of around 25 mins avg) everyday. If not an hour probably they watch enough reels that day to make it an hour. Also, I’m being generous over here, you know that your screen time is wayyy beyond this and so is everyone else’s.
What’s wrong in watching these? The person making the videos seems really nice. They helps others as if they is the most kind people ever. Keep reminding you that whatever they show is the truth. All fine. But why are you watching the video? Does he teach you something new? Do you not know how a lower/middle/upper class person spends his daily routine? Do you need to keep an eye on their daily routine and take care of their work? No right. Yet you watch… Oh so you say it’s entertaining to watch the videos everyday. Yes, that; that’s the problem. Wait, first take a deep breath. You are still reading aren’t you. It’s not going to waste you time taking a deep breath you know. Good. Now tell me, do you need that entertainment? Are you unhappy? If you are unhappy, watching the video won’t help you know that. So who’s benefitting from all this. The person making the video is probably not doing any other job (if they are, then god they making money 💸).
Now let’s get to calculations. 1 hour everyday is 1.3 days every month. That’s 18 freaking days every year! If you spent around 1hrs 48mins everyday, that is one complete month. So you want to waste almost a month of you life every year gaining absolutely nothing? or some unnecessary entertainment?? I hope not. Anyway I’m not telling you all this to influence/motivate/demotivate you. Just want you to realize it and make decisions in your life accordingly.
By the way, is this good? Suppose I am a content creator, should I be thinking all this. Also there are people all over in the comment section (fans) of these content creators. Other than some exceptions most of these people don’t really take anything good from these vlogs (of the little life lessons that you could). People see others happy and get happy. People see others kind and get happy. But that does not change them. They still remain who they were, how they were. It’s the real life experiences which influence you, which change you. I might be wrong in this and these are just my thoughts; for now at least.