Books? Books? What’s a book?
BY:
Cassandra Este
Social Media Analyst
PROJECT COUNSEL MEDIA
13 September 2022 (San Francisco, California) – Before I start my new role as Silicon Valley reporter for Project Counsel Media (a 6-month role; I worked in the Valley several years ago at Google), I decided to spend some time with my grandson who just settled here with his Mom and Dad – and landed a job at a retail ice cream shop where he’ll work during his two years of American high school. More about his (comical) adventures in a moment.
There was a citation in my news feed today to the estimable Murdochian Wall Street Journal, the citation entitled “Instagram Stumbles in Push to Mimic TikTok Internal Documents Show“. Over the last several years there has been a tsunami of leaked “internal documents”, and I’ll address that in a separate post.
One line I found darned interesting is:
“Instagram users cumulatively are spending 17.6 million hours a day watching Reels, less than one-tenth of the 197.8 million hours TikTok users spend each day on that platform“.
From my point of view these data reveal an intense, intellectual commitment to creating shortened attention spans. What about reading a – oh, what are those artifacts called? – books. Wow. A formula for critical thinking and learning complex subjects for sure.
Oh, my grandson. He and is colleague were struggling to read the printed instructions for closing out the cash register at the end of their shift. He said “Grandma, we had to read this thing. A manual. It’s like a book. We searched the register manufacturer web site, and all over Youtube and TikTok to find a video on closing out a cash register and there was … NOTHING!”
Words. Yeah. Words.
