Social Media Statistics – NBC’s Meet the Press

The longest-running show in television history, NBC’s “Meet the Press”, begins the new year with a bipartisan, fair and balanced, yet revealing special report on the negative aspects of Social Media in America today. Below, without editorial comment until the end, is a list of summary statistics and insider quotes from that broadcast.


A Biblical Christian View
This is the world we live in today and tomorrow. However, it does not need to be where our citizenship ultimately lies (Eph. 2:8-9, Rom. 10:9).  

Romans 12:2 – Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

This podcast is based on original BCWorldview.org content. Some episodes are narrated using an AI-generated version of the author's own voice.

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Welcome to Biblical Christian Worldview's Selective Article Podcasts. So let's get started. Today's podcast is entitled Social Media Statistics, NBC's Meet the Press. The longest-running show in television history, NBC's Meet the Press, begins the new year with a bipartisan, fair, and balanced yet revealing special report on the negative aspects of social media in America today. Below or following, without any editorial comment on my part until the end, is a list of summary statistics and insider quotes taken from that broadcast. The first group of statistics come mostly, if not totally, from Pew Research, fairly recent studies. First, 64% of Americans believe social media has been bad for democracy. While the worldwide median average is only 35% of those that consider social media being bad. Use of at least one social media platform among U.S. adults was 5% in 2005 and has risen to 72% by 2022. 69% of Americans believe social media has made us less civil as compared to only 40 per 6% worldwide. Only 64% of Americans believe social media makes one more informed as compared to a worldwide average of 73%. In 2012, 50% of Americans were using some form of social media as compared to 72% today. And by age group, 84% of those 18 to 29, 81% of those 30 to 49, and 60% of those over 50 are using some form of social media. 82% of Americans are on YouTube, 70% are on Facebook, 47% on Instagram, 30% on TikTok, 27% on Snapchat, and 27% also on Twitter. Worldwide, two point nine billion people are on Facebook, 2.6 billion on YouTube, 2 billion on Instagram, 1 billion on TikTok, 319 million on Snapchat, and 211 million on Twitter. Social networking sites in the US brought in $72.2 billion in advertising revenue in 2022. So now for more quantitative, I'm sorry, qualitative information from the Meet the Press report. Chuck Todd was quoted as saying social media companies are profiting off of America's anger online. Starting in 2017, Facebook's ranking algorithm treated angry images reactions as five times more valuable than likes. Why? Well, because anger generates clicks and clicks generate profit. Tristan Harris from the Center for Humane Technology was quoted as saying the better you are at innovating a new way to be divisive, we will pay you in more likes, followers, and retweets. Went on to say further partisanship in radio and television pre-existed social media, there's no question. Have we ever wired up the most powerful artificial intelligence in the world, pointed it at your brainstem to show you the most engaging and enraging content on a daily basis? And the longer you scroll, the more you get we have never done that before. Peter Zekto, which was a who was a whistle blower at Twitter, was quoted as saying, I'm reminded of one conversation with an executive when I said I'm confident that we have a foreign agent. And their response was, Well, since we already have one, what does it matter if we have more? Let's keep growing the office, unquote. Brian Boland, former Facebook VP, was quoted as saying, rather than address the serious issues raised by its own research, meta leadership chooses growing the company over keeping people safe. Unquote. Mark Zuckerberg, who obviously is a Facebook CEO in March of 21, was quoted as saying the reality is that our country is deeply divided right now, and that isn't something tech companies alone can fix. Evan Spiegel, Snapchat CEO in September of 22, was quoted as saying the more importantly, more importantly, it is to build a strategy that does not rely on government intervention for our success. Elon Musk was quoted in April of 22 by saying Twitter has become a kind of de facto town square. And so it's really important that people have both the reality and the perception that they are able to speak freely within the bounds of the law, unquote. Chuck Todd, the moderator of Meet the Press, was quoted as saying, so quote, we invited Meta, Twitter, Google, Snapchat, and TikTok onto this broadcast to defend their practices and simply have a conversation about the future of their platforms and what can be done. All of them declined. Francis Hogan, Facebook whistleblower from 1021, was quoted as saying, During my time at Facebook, I came to realize a devastating truth. Almost no one outside of Facebook knows what happens inside Facebook. She went on to say, when we realized the harm that big tobacco caused, we took action. When we figured out cars were safer with seatbelts, the government took action. When we learned that opioids were taking lives, the government took action. I implore you to do the same here. She was speaking before a government panel. And finally, President Biden. To the question of what is your message to platforms like Facebook, his answer was, quote, they are killing people, unquote. So a bit of history on government legislation. In 1996, Section 220 of Title 47 of the U.S. Communication Decency Act was written, and it stated, quote, no provider or user of any interactive computer service shall be treated as a publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. Chuck Todd, after reading that, was quoted as saying the last real legislation on who is legally responsible for content on the internet, which is this Section 220, was signed into law 27 years ago. In 1996, only a fifth of Americans had ever booted up the World Wide Web. Todd went on to say content providers cannot be held liable or the con chu Chug Todd went on to define section 220 in his own words by saying, quote, content providers cannot be held liable for content users' posts on their sites and can't be sued. The question is, the minute they use algorithms, do they become a publisher? This law, section 220 or 230 rather, was written before the algorithm had taken hold. Todd went on to say there were more than 30 bills proposed by the last Congress attempting to hold social media platforms accountable for content. None of them have passed. Senator Amy Klobishar, the Democrat from Michigan, was on Meet the Press, and she was quoted as saying, these companies have started dominating our thought processes. They are publishers. And finally, Republican Mike Gallagher from Wisconsin stated in reference to social media and in particular TikTok, he considered it digital fentanyl, quote unquote. I think the comparison is apt. For one, it is highly addictive and destructive, and for another, referencing TikTok, it's controlled by the CCP or the Chinese Communist Party. So my comments. It should be noted that social media has significantly undermined the profitability and credibility of traditional news sources, particularly from the major networks. So presenting the destructive nature of social media serves the financial interests of NBC and Meet the Press specifically. In my view, the information from this NBC Meet the Press special presents only one side of a growing popular, or the growing popularity rather, of social media. The reality ignored by NBC and other outlets on both ends of the political spectrum is that Americans no longer trust traditional news sources and are looking elsewhere for information. Reliance on individual bloggers is attractive because the isolation of the country into factions and the inability to believe what is being reported as fact by conventional news sources, much less our politicians. The result has been the formation of grassroots conspiracy-based and typically polarizing extremes in the flow of information on the Internet. Social media is not only an algorithm-based opioid, but it's a place to hide outside the extremes of groupthink presented in traditional outlets, particularly television. So, what about the future of social media? I think it'll continue to grow. However, content providers will be viewed more and more as publishers rather than non-libel platforms. The algorithms used to promote various agendas will eventually be exposed, which is what's currently happening on Twitter. And their demise through exposure and legislation will further add to the breadth of extreme and inaccurate information surfacing on social media. Finally, what was never addressed in this NBC social media special, yet holds the greatest potential for abuse, are the new artificial intelligence content generators, many of which are nearly impossible to detect. The incorporation of these maturing devices where articles indistinguishable from the labor of human research and content can be generated in seconds, biased to the programmers' preferences, and disseminated across social media platforms by the thousands. By merging that technology with the latest deep fakes of AI generated avatars that appear to be actual political or celebrity figures on video, one has the makings for a quantum leap in social media seduction. Seduction. So a biblical Christian view. This is the world we live in today and tomorrow. However, it does not need to be where our citizenship ultimately lies. Reference to Ephesians 2 8 9 and Romans 10 9. So I'll leave you with Romans 12 2. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. God bless you as you serve Him today. Today's podcast article was brought to you by BCworldview.org, providing honest reporting and analysis on the intersection of contemporary issues and theology based on a biblical Christian worldview. May God bless you as you continue to walk through this life with our Savior and Lord.