Categories: Articles

The Paradox Of Screentime

Every Monday morning at 7:10 am, I am a guest contributor on CHOM 97.7 FM radio broadcasting out of Montreal (home base). It’s not a long segment – about 5 to 10 minutes every week – about everything that is happening in the world of technology and digital media. The good folks at CHOM 97.7 FM are posting these segments weekly to SoundCloud, if you’re interested in hearing more of me blathering away. I’m really excited about this opportunity, because this is the radio station that I grew up on listening to, and it really is a fun treat to be invited to the Mornings Rock with Terry and Heather B. morning show. The segment is called, CTRL ALT Delete with Mitch Joel.

This week we discussed:

How’s this for depressing: The Washington Post recently wrote an in-depth piece on kids these days and their social media usage, and in it was this startling statistic, courtesy a 2015 study by the nonprofit group Common Sense Media: Teens are spending nearly nine hours a day consuming media. And children ages eight to 12 are spending nearly six hours a day doing the same thing. That’s almost every waking hour!
So, just how big is Snapchat? Last week, Snapchat announced in a filing that it closed a $1.8 billion series of funding. That makes it close to a $20 billion company. Snapchat projected revenue of $250 million to $350 million in 2016 and $500 million to $1 billion in 2017. Snapchat also reported 110 million daily active users at year-end 2015, up from 74 million at the end of 2014.
Do you watch videos on Facebook? Facebook is very proud of their big video numbers. Well, with upwards of 8 billion views per day on its platform, it’s rocking. But, it may just be a bunch of silence movies. As much as 85 percent of video views happen with the sound off, according to multiple publishers.
App of the week: FullContact for Gmail.