People love being connected, especially on the go. But is your phone really the right place for social media?
– 47% of people that use social media do so from their mobiles.
– 4/10 smartphone users will use a social network application.
The most popular free app is Facebook
– Facebook on Android: 192.8 million monthly active users.
– Facebook on iPhone: 147.2 million monthly active users.
The Facebook Drain
An increase in signal and airtime usage means a strain on network capacity, which can directly affect cost of delivery from service operators and your phone’s battery life.
– Mobile signal is the connection of the mobile phone with its network.
– Airtime is the number of minutes spent actively on the network.
– Facebook mobile signal and airtime usage, before and after the November 2012 app release show that mobile signal increase from 10% to 60% and airtime increase from 15% to 25%.
– During this time, Facebook users only increased by 4%.
– This indicated Facebook’s new features, rather than users, intensify the network load. Facebook’s new features provide a gateway to other social sites, greatly increasing Facebook’s appetite for data consumption.
The cost of being social
– The US are the highest users of mobile broadband, with monthly contracts dominating the US and Europe.
– While the cost of data continues to fall, mobile data usage is expected to grow twenty-fold by 2017.
Snap and stream your way through data
Twitter:
$125.93 per year
Uploading 1 photo a day (6.5MB) = $0.195
Viewing 10 photos a day (0.5MB/photo) = $.15
YouTube
$438 per year
Streaming 10 minutes of video a day (40MB) = $1.20
Facebook
$470.85
Browsing for 1 hour a day (20MB) = $.60
Uploading 1 photo a day (8MB) = $.24
Viewing 10 photos a day (1.5MB/photo) = $.45
Pandora
$657 per year
Listening to 1 hour of radio a day (60MB) = $1.80
Spotify
$788.40 per year
Listening to 1 hour of Spotify at medium bitrate 160kps (72MB) a day = $2.16
Total cost: US$2,480 a year
May be you’re happy to pay the cost of the extra data, but what is the cost of being perpetually connected to out social networks?
Life Drain
Social Media on Your Phone is worse than Cannabis and Alcohol for driving.
Distractions and how much they slow driving reaction times:
– 38% using a smartphone for social networking
– 21% cannabis
– 12.5% legal limit alcohol
– Drivers using a mobile phone are 4x more likely to crash
– Every additional 1,000,000 mobile phone subscriptions = 19% rise in distracted driving fatalities.
Twitter Car crash example:
– Araceli Beas hit and killed a pedestrian as she was allegedly updating her Facebook status.
– Two women were killed by a derailed train as they were drinking and Tweeting.
– Taylor Sauer drove into a truck on a highway as she posted on Facebook every 90 seconds while driving.
Emotional Drain
– 45% of people feel worried or uncomfortable when not able to access their social networks.
– 66% of peope have difficulty sleeping after using social media.
– 60% of people feel the need to switch off their phones to have a break.
– 25% of people have relationship difficulties because of confrontational online behavior.
– A study has found that turning off mobile phones and avoiding the internet can leave people suffering from symptoms similar to those seen in drug addicts trying to go ‘cold turkey’.
Loss of Privacy
– 64% have accepted a friend request from a stranger
– 73% use a geo tracking application on their mobile phone
– 46% women and 27% men are ‘highly concerned’ about letting a stalker know where they are
– 41% are ‘aware or extremely concerned’ about letting potential burglars know when they are not at home
Stop the drain
More apps running in your smartphone background will mean a shorter battery life. Make the most of your juice by closing apps completely, or follow these simple tips:
1. Set a time to be social
Disable push notifications so you’re in control of when you access social media and help eliminate the stress from constant interruption.
2. Disable automatic application updates.
If you receive 10 app updates a month, this would equal to about 60MB. Update over wifi instead.
3. Install Onavo Extend
By compressing your data, Onavo Extend can increase the power of data plan by up to 500%
4. Delete some Facebook friends.
The mind can only handle 150 relationships at a time.
5. Be wary of free apps, as ad supported apps use up more battery
Up to 75% of energy used by free version of Android apps is spent serving up ads or tracking and uploading user data.
6. Check your privacy settings
Make sure you know you you’re sharing your personal details with.
