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The Metrics That Built Social Media May Be Measuring the Wrong Thing

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The Metrics That Built Social Media May Be Measuring the Wrong Thing

Social media knows how to measure what keeps us watching. The harder question is whether it knows how to measure what makes us stay for each other.

If someone spends 60 minutes scrolling through 100 videos, most social platforms have plenty of reasons to call that a successful session. If someone spends those same 60 minutes with one person – talking, reacting, requesting a song, coming back to a conversation – the numbers may look less impressive. But which experience was actually more social?

I think about this distinction a lot because I operate a social livestreaming platform, and our industry has become exceptionally good at measuring consumption. We know how long people stay, how much they watch, what makes them stop scrolling and what brings them back. These metrics helped build some of the most successful products in history.

The problem starts when we assume they also measure connection. Someone can spend an hour surrounded by people on a screen without interacting with a single one. We’ve all done it. You open an app to reply to a message, somehow end up watching a stranger reorganize her kitchen, learn more than you intended about someone else’s divorce, see three opinions about AI and emerge 45 minutes later having communicated with absolutely nobody. That’s engagement. It just isn’t necessarily social.

Many social platforms began primarily with people we knew or deliberately chose to follow. Then recommendation systems became good enough that knowing someone was no longer necessary.



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