On a daily basis, my social media usage is pretty straightforward; wake up, check Instagram and Twitter (and occasionally Facebook), then check Instagram and Twitter throughout the day, and end my day once again checking Instagram and Twitter. Here and there I’ll post to Instagram, but more often than not, my time spent on them is scrolling through to see what others have posted instead. There is very little effort put through when I’m on these apps; it’s a lot of scrolling and reading, and occasionally replying or liking. And that is really the extent of the labor I perform on these sites. And because I’m on these sites for “fun,” and not work or making a job out of it, I can’t really agree that there’s labor being performed, like Smythe argues. Or at least not in the sense that I equate with labor.

I know it would be a different conversation if I was trying to make a living off of my social media or if I was in charge of the social media for a company; those are jobs. And I would expect a compensation for that. Since I can’t say that any of the activity that I’m doing in regard to social media is going to be “labor,” I think the lack of reward I get for that is spot on. (Maybe the reward should be staying off social media, but that is neither here nor there.) It does circle back, in my opinion, to this is how I’m spending my free time, and I’m barely doing anything, so why should I be compensated for that? 

With that being said, just because I’m not being paid for my time on social media, social media is certainly getting paid for my time being spent on there.

But even though I’m not always contributing something tangible to these sites, like a tweet or a photo, I’m still opening them up every day. I’ll still click on someone’s profile, or a link, or an advertisement by accident. Even though I’m not often posting, and I don’t have a large amount of followers, they’re still making money off of me because I am a user of the service they’re providing. For instance, Instagram made a reported $20 billion in advertising revenue in 2019 according to The Verge. As they point out, “Ads show up on Instagram in between Stories, within the feed, and on the Explore tab.”

Because every user gets ads, and a lot of the click on them either willingly or unknowingly, Instagram is making money. I’m helping them make money every time I view an ad on stories or click on a sponsored post, and it would be naïve to think that that’s not the case. And it would be naïve to think that my activity on these sites, and the data I’m providing isn’t going to help some other company turn a profit. I know that my curiosity about the Etsy knitting kit I looked at is eventually going to make its way to an ad on Instagram. That is the Internet in 2020/2021.

I suppose if I want to ensure that I’m going to be properly compensated for my time spent on social media then I really need to stop using social media. But I can’t see that happening anytime soon. So I will continue to spend my free time, morning, noon, and night scrolling through these various apps adding to their billion-dollar revenues.