Social Media Degenerative Brain Disease

I love Learning online.

There are so many interesting individuals with unique points of view to gain Insights, from across the globe.

However, recently I've been noticing something strange.

People don't seem to "Discuss" anything.

I look on Social Media but don't find things to Learn.

Even when I try to Learn, I seem to get nothing.

Point in case, I was on LinkedIn recently (which tends to be my favorite Social Media due to higher Quality Content).

As I was doing a light scroll, I saw someone pose an interesting Belief.

They stated,

LinkedIn should cap posts at 120 words. Upgrade to premium to unlock 240+ words.

Concise content is better content.

Now, there is some Truth in what they are saying.

If you can make something Concise, it tends to translate better, especially on Social Media.

However, some aspects of the Strategy I wasn't sure made sense, given LinkedIn's Current Model.

I can also admit that I'm not a genius when it comes to Social Media.

As the person who wrote the piece was a Vice President of Growth, I thought, perhaps, they could enlighten me.

So I posed a response hoping to learn what they may be seeing that perhaps I was missing.

In the desire to work within the Boundaries set by the author, I challenged myself to keep my thoughts and questions within 120 words.

I'm not sure how this would fit LinkedIn's Strategy?

If you want to do a long post, write an article. If they start charging for long posts... people won't pay.

Unless LinkedIn started charging to make Articles... which would push people to go off LinkedIn.

Plus, how would switching to Twitter/X's Strategy benefit LinkedIn? Category King/Queens gain, on average, 75% of their market.

Then, when Social Media companies attempt to hijack a different model, it typically backfires.

Conciseness can be beneficial, but it's not always the best strategy.

If you want to learn something, you don't read 600 social posts, you read 1 book.

LinkedIn favors High-Quality Content, which sometimes means deeper dives.

Unless I'm missing something? Happy to learn!

It is a packed response, but there is a lot to unpack when we talk about these types of Business Strategies.

I also know that, as much as Conciseness "can" be Beneficial, when you look at things like Success Quotes, you can create a lot of Confusion by being "Too" Concise.

I was Hopeful that I would Learn something from this individual...

Or really anyone who agreed with them, as a few different individuals appeared to agree.

However, I am very aware there is also an AI Commenter Problem on LinkedIn, so perhaps we were just seeing (mostly) AI responses (sadly).

I waited a week.

No one attempted to answer my Thoughts or Questions.

At the end of the week, I received the first and only response...

I read half of Cody's response. Too long. Next.

So, instead of gaining Insights, I only got a response saying the reader didn't have the attention span to get through my thoughts or questions...

Despite keeping to the 120-word suggestion that the author posed, that I'm assuming the commenter also agreed with.

I have no problems with anyone telling me that I may be off the mark in my assessment, again I'm not a Marketer by Trade.

But not a single person even attempted to address any aspect of my thoughts!

(PS - If you Do have a Perspective to help me Understand this, I would Love to hear from you! Feel free to comment, message, or email me!)

This interaction really highlighted two things for me.

Our attention spans as Humans seem to be getting excessively low, considering that people are saying LinkedIn should "limit" the word count while also being a High-Quality Platform.

120 words seem miniscule to state anything High-Quality, as it is only about 1/2 of a Double Spaced Typed Page.

Yet, it seems even 120 words is "Too long" for people's Attention Span.

This scares me a little because, Experts still say that to just "Begin" to Learn any Topic, you should read a Book about it.

On the low end, a Non-Fiction book is recommended to be about 50,000 words - over 400x the length of people's seeming Attention Span.

Experts also state that it takes 10 "well-chosen" Books to only understand "expert consensus" on a Topic.

That is 4,000x longer than a single post under the 120-word limit, again on the low end.

This would mean you would need to Read significantly "more" to become an Expert yourself (though you may be able to supplement Videos, Podcasts, and Courses as well, assuming they are well-chosen).

However, there is something else that I find perhaps more troubling.

No one seemed interested in addressing my Thoughts.

No one was agreeing "or" disagreeing, nor were they having a conversation around it.

Even though we were on "Social Media" there was nothing "Social" happening.

More and more, I am seeing people throw opinions out, and no one is discussing them.

I am all for differing opinions from my own, I regularly try to find them to Challenge my Thinking, because I'd like to Understand them better.

Often my Thinking is made significantly better "because" I look for Differing Thoughts.

But to Understand, we need to be able to Talk about different Topics.

If people have Questions or Disagree, we can't just Ignore them.

We must Engage with each other - and giving a "thumbs-up" isn't True Engagement.

I say all of this because I think that Social Media is creating something that I'm going to call the Social Media Degenerative Brain Disease (SMDBD).

It seems the more people participate in "Social" Media, the shorter their Attention Spans become and the worse their Ability to Engage becomes.

Quite literally, it seems to be causing Brain Degeneration.

How can we Advance as a Society if we can't keep Attention on Difficult Subjects or Engage with each other to Challenge our Ideas to Improve them?

The Reality is that we can't.

I believe that SMDBD is something we should combat, and should Not allow to decimate our Lives.

So what should we do?

How do we overcome this?

Well, perhaps the Problem is "Social Media" itself.

Perhaps we as a Society need a new, different type of Solution.

One where we can pose Challenging Ideas, and where we can also Learn and Question each other in a Beneficial way.

Maybe we need Civil Discourse Media.

A Platform where we can bring up Ideas, ask Questions around them (in a Civil manner of course), and push each other to become Better.

Perhaps it is Civil Discourse Media that could become the Cure to SMDBD.