{"id":13652,"date":"2023-05-30T19:02:33","date_gmt":"2023-05-30T19:02:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/socialpanic.org\/?p=13652"},"modified":"2024-12-11T21:08:47","modified_gmt":"2024-12-11T21:08:47","slug":"social-who-uses-twitter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/2023\/05\/30\/social-who-uses-twitter\/","title":{"rendered":"Social: Who uses Twitter? The &#8220;outrage&#8221; amplifier"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/backlinko.com\/twitter-users#:~:text=Twitter%20has%20396.5%20million%20users%207.2%25%20of%20internet,Twitter%20users%20access%20the%20platform%20at%20least%20monthly\">Twitter has about 400 million users<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>75% are outside the U.S., and about 100 million are in the U.S.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>About 37 million in the U.S. use Twitter every day or about 11% of the population, but another figure says half of U.S. users access Twitter daily &#8211; which would be about 15%.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>About 7% of all global Internet users access Twitter at least once per month.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The top 10% of Twitter users account for 92% of all tweets.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>There are about 2x more men using Twitter, than women.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Nearly 2 in 3 years are between age 25 and 49.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The top accounts, by number of followers, are mostly celebrities and celebrity politicians.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>More data here: <a href=\"https:\/\/financesonline.com\/number-of-twitter-users\/\">https:\/\/financesonline.com\/number-of-twitter-users\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Relatively few people are very active on Twitter &#8211; again the top 10% of users account for 90+% of all Tweets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tragically, using social media is likely bad for our mental health and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.harvardmagazine.com\/2022\/03\/right-now-social-media-adult-depression\">increases depression<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/health\/mental-health\/social-media-linked-rise-mental-health-disorders-teens-survey-finds-n982526\">anxiety<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Social media also encourages an increase in anger and outrage: &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/news.yale.edu\/2021\/08\/13\/likes-and-shares-teach-people-express-more-outrage-online\">Social media platforms like Twitter amplify expressions of moral outrage over time because users learn such language gets rewarded with an increased number of \u201clikes\u201d and \u201cshares,\u201d a new Yale University study shows<\/a>.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thus, social media is an outrage amplifier. The result is increased anger and unfortunately, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencefocus.com\/the-human-body\/why-social-media-makes-us-so-angry-and-what-you-can-do-about-it\/\">a seemingly normalization of anger and being angry<\/a>. Anger, in turn, is a few steps away from becoming violent (actual violence, not the &#8220;speech is violence&#8221; silliness). Literally, &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.psychologytoday.com\/us\/blog\/friction\/201807\/why-social-media-makes-us-angrier-and-more-extreme\">Social Media Makes Us Angrier &#8211; and More Extreme<\/a>&#8220;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My view is that Twitter emphasizes very short texts, relatively few images or videos &#8211; and far greater use of anonymous accounts &#8211; the combination of anonymity and short texts out of context leads to more expression of outrage, more hurtful messages, leading to misunderstandings and shouting matches and ridicule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The primary purpose of Twitter is to leave a trail of breadcrumbs for someone to data mine in the future &#8211; then getting them in trouble or merely twisting words from the past, out of context, because someone in the present has an outrage problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Twitter is not good for one&#8217;s mental health. Studies show that Twitter (and some other social media) act as outrage amplifiers, creating more anger and more polarization.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13652\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}