Technology, Inequality, and Society

Matt Ridley, in his book "How Innovation Works", highlights an important historical fact. Every technology, be that in the ancient times or the contemporary,  has been opposed by the society in its initial phase of adoption. Such opposition usually comes from vested interest groups who feel the new technology as a threat to their incumbent business. Sometimes, criticisms also come from influential groups who have no direct relevance to the technology being tested. One example Ridley gives is the  genetically modified crops, which is being opposed by the rich nations that are already food surplus. Genetically modified crops could result in better yield, both in terms of quality and volume, which could be a great boon to starving population worldwide.  Ridley gives countless examples of perceived threats of new technologies that were rejected by the test of time, ranging from the claimed health hazards of coffee to the fear of mass unemployment due to automation. The appare...

In this post I continue with a quick reading of the “ Teens, social media and technology 2022 ” survey findings. Previously I looked at Twitter, technology that teens never fell in love. In this post I am curious why so many teens broke their relationship with Facebook. In 2014-15 Facebook dominated Snapchat and Instagram. 71% of teens in the survey said they ‘ever use’ Facebook back then. The term ‘ever use’ can be misread so I clarify it a bit. They use this term to distinguish from ‘constant use’. It suffices to read ‘ever use’ as ‘once in a while’. In 2022 this number has plummeted to 32%. Only 2% of them associate themselves with ‘constant use’. Considering the scale, this is a dramatic drop. Why did this happen? It is easy to fall into the trap of weaving a story after the fact. There are many such contenders.  First a classic, “teens left when adults (and parents) flocked to it in huge numbers”.  Second, “teens never were into it actually despite what the big number sug...

The “ Teens, social media and technology 2022 ” survey conducted by Pew Research in the USA finds that teens (13-17 years) that ‘ever’ use Twitter has gone down from 33% in 2014-15 to 23% 2022. The term “ever use” means they “hardly use at all” in the context of the survey. Percentage of teens that “constantly use” Twitter would be much much lower, in single digit I would guess. We can extrapolate the guesstimate from their earlier report. In 2019 they reported that only 10% of the adult Twitter users are the “most active” (read it here ).  If we are to be observer similar proportion, total Teens that are most active on Twitter is 2.3%. There are several interesting observations regarding other social media platforms, which I will cover on other posts. I focus on Twitter to focus on specific questions that immediately came into my mind while reading the statistics. In no particular order: Is Twitter use driven by adults (non-teens) whose first experience with social media is throug...