Matt Kushin, Ph.D.

For example, 2019 findings from Edison Research and Triton Digital show social media usage overall among Americans 12 to 34 years old across several platforms has either leveled off or is waning, while 2019 research from Global Web Index suggests that the amount of time millennial and Gen Z audiences spend on many social platforms is either flat, declining, or not rising as greatly as it has in years’ past.

To understand what’s driving this shift, you need only talk to young people. They’re saying that after years spent constructing carefully curated online identities and accumulating heaps of online “friends,” they want to be themselves and make real friends based on shared interests.

Your efforts to show up on page one shouldn't eclipse the fact that, at the end of the day, Google likes to rank brands, and the low-click landscape is practically built to help your clients build their reputation via branding, messaging, and increased share of voice.

For the first time, the state learned the scale of the opioid shipments: Distributors had poured more than 780 million oxycodone and hydrocodone pills into West Virginia between 2007 and 2012.

“Mind-boggling,” the judge would later say.

As such, Tenney stands as an example of an increasingly stark bifurcation of fame between generations that has arisen with a more siloed media landscape and the ability of digital-first platforms to amplify video game players.

Which means that several important components of being a happy, relaxed parent have nothing to do with parents’ behavior, but depend on the support system in place where they live—something American parents can’t emulate.

A few years ago you might have said podcasting was just radio for the internet. Today, the audio is almost beside the point. Today’s podcast hosts are not just on-air personae, but community managers, designers of incentives, spokespeople for subscription toothbrushes and business-to-business software. The worth of a podcast is no longer just its content, but rather the sum of the relations it produces — fan to host, fan to fan, fake friends eating ice cream on billboards together.

The new “Disclosures 101 for Social Media Influencers” is straightforward, and summarizes the FTC’s approach to disclosure requirements.  It also provides guidance for communicators in how disclosures should be made when the influencer has a “material connection” with a brand.  Here are a few of the highlights from the new FTC publication:

Thoughts?

Virtual assistants and ever smarter homes able to understand our physical and emotional states will open up new frontiers for mischief making.