Is content the new drug

 I am not a huge fan of going to the office. I started my corporate life with  the  “work from home” era and I started to like it. But then my manager visited our office, from Sweden, so we all planned to go to the  office during that week.  That’s when  I realized how wrong I was about going to the office.  I was missing the work gossip around the coffee counter (which is really important), and also meeting new people because, while working from home, I am just networking with my teammates and some other people with whom I am collaborating while performing my daily tasks, but when I go to office I meet  new people, I get to know what they are doing in their processes, understanding therefore  the big picture of the Banking Industry. Getting back to the topic,  when I go to office I usually  travel by bus and what I realised at some point,  while riding that bus every day, is that everyone was just watching Tik Tok videos, Insta reels, Facebook shorts, Insta and Facebook and many more. I realized that such video formats are very addictive as they show you something you are really interested in (algos) and the videos will pop up according to your interests (Again, algos) and you will get stuck in an endless loop until your bus stop arrives.

Then I started my research on why there is so little effort on such platforms, because the smaller the effort,  the more addictive the content will be.  The same concept is also copied by Netflix. In Netflix the next episode will play just after a few seconds and sometimes it even skips the intro, so you don’t have to put in more effort. I remember when I used to watch movies on TV channels. Whenever there used to be advertisements, I used to hydrate myself and now because of such an ad-free online streaming platform I am not drinking enough water Xd. Whether it is  YouTube,Netflix or social media platforms, they are all selling content. A content is a very wide term: it can be a short 10 second video ,a 3 and half hours-long movie (the Irishman) ,a meme picture or a YouTube vlog/series and day by day the content consumption is increasing. In 2017 the average time spent on social media by a single user was 134 mins and in 2020 the time increased by 15 mins. I also noticed one more thing: people also started to have an opinion on the things they are watching so you can judge a person based on their watchlist and pages they follow on social media, but that's a different topic altogether. This addiction is so bad because it distracts you from what you are doing. Even though  most of the people are using social media while watching series, which is just another layer of content within the content (So, ironic).

If you are thinking I am against social media, I’m not. It's not like that. I think in this new generation, where networking plays a vital role, social media plays a vital role for networking. For example, I organized a quiz event. If there was no social media, I would have to go to each and every person and tell them about my event and, even  if I dedicated my entire week I would have only accumulated around 10-15 people by spending  8-9 hours in the chilling cold. There is no competition against social media reach. The widest reach in today’s world is only possible via social media. Nowadays, Digital marketing plays a very important role in today’s era. The concept of humanizing the corporate social media account and getting retweets/likes by making sarcastic remarks on their rivals is just an amazing way to promote their brands. As an introvert I was never very good at meeting new people or starting a conversation but now if  I  want to ignite a conversation with anyone I’ll just ask what they are watching and then the conversation would go till eternity, and it is really an icebreaker. The content can be good or bad, it's totally up to you how you use the internet. There are so many educational videos available on the internet where you can gain knowledge about any topic you are interested in.

During this lockdown there is a global surge in consumption of content. According to the study the average time spent by a person on screen (non-work related) is quarter of a daytime and in some countries like Indonesia the average time spent is 6 hours, The developing countries affected the most because of content addiction.

I read a quote somewhere that cocaine and salary is the most addictive drug but I think there is a chance that there is a new drug in the market.