The Time Well Spent Movement, According To Marketers, Is Not Impacting Their Social Media Strategies.

Marketing Land conducted a survey asking marketers how they incorporate the Time Well Spent movement into their social media strategies.

This year, several social networking programmes and mobile device operating systems released tools to encourage more responsible Internet use. Former Google design ethicist Tristan Harris, whose Ted Talk “A handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day” has been seen almost 400,000 times, established the notion of Time Well Spent, of which these efforts are a part.

In response to the movement’s emphasis on digital wellbeing, social media platforms have implemented features like user activity dashboards and “take a break” prompts. Time Well Spent initiatives aim to get people to spend less time on their phones and social media, but it’s not clear if or how this will affect social media marketing.

We polled 55 marketers to see if these initiatives are on their minds and if they’ve altered their approach to social media advertising.

Most people’s social media plans have not been altered by Time Well Spent.

The majority of marketers have shown a lack of concern over measures used to limit consumer engagement. Our survey found that 42% of marketers say the social media trend has had no effect on their strategies. Another sixteen percent were completely unfamiliar with the Time Well Spent concept.

Not about a quarter (23%) of respondents claimed the movement has altered their social media tactics in any way.

Only 1 in 5 people indicated they had changed their approach to social media because of the Time Well Spent initiative.

The opinions of social media experts on Time Well Spent

According to Wieden + Kennedy’s head of social strategy, John Petty, the movement has not reduced use of social applications or mobile devices.

Michael Priem, CEO and founder of Modern Impact, speculates anecdotally on whether or not tech giants like Apple and Google are introducing digital well-being features out of altruism or in response to pressure.

Offering these enhancements appears like a peace offering to users and the parents of screen-addicted children. After all, we should already own the phone at this point. Do Apple and Google really want to restrict our ability to buy and use apps? inquired Priem.

Priem agrees with Petty’s results and predicts that the Time Well Spent movement won’t inspire significant user behaviour change.

Putting users’ actions ahead of the constraints of the platform

While the Time Well Spent campaign is on Petty’s team’s radar, he emphasised that human behaviour takes precedence over technology. Instead, he proposed a situation that would completely reverse efforts to improve digital health.

Could you ever fathom? questioned Petty As one observer put it, “in that case, it’s a different world — a group of teens circling up at the lunch table or by a row of lockers checking each other’s scorecards is social behaviour, and emerging from that huddle as ‘the victor,’ grants an enormous amount of social currency.”

The company’s head of social strategy expressed concern that putting an emphasis on users’ digital health might be counterproductive. It would be unethical for us to devise techniques that rob viewers of their social currency if we were collaborating with a company whose target demographic included those teenagers. Always and forever, our audience and their habits will be the primary focus of the material and experiences we create. In second place are the platform’s regulations.