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Starting in the 1990s, following a massive marketing campaign that newly-formulated opioids were less addictive than traditional opioids (even though they weren’t), opioid prescriptions sky-rocketed in America. So did opioid addiction. By the 2010s, many people addicted to opioids switched to heroin and then Fentanyl. As a result, literally hundreds of thousands of people have died from opioid overdoses. Nearly 80,000 people died in 2021, ten times as many people died from opioid overdoses in 1999. The economic impacts are almost incalculable, not to mention the political impacts.
Does the entertainment industry face the same potential crises?
Two years ago, I had an idea for an article. Following the research on social media’s harms and then watching the rise of legalized gambling, I realized that the entertainment industry had its own potential crises brewing beneath its surface. I pitched this article on this topic to a few outlets, but I wasn’t able to get it placed anywhere, then I never got around to writing it up myself.
Sure enough, last month, a jury found Facebook and YouTube guilty of, at best, harming a user and ignoring their platforms’ addictiveness or, at worst, intentionally creating addictive platforms. The jury gave the plaintiffs a (pretty reasonable, frankly) $3 million verdict. (Separately, Meta also lost a trial around child safety in New Mexico.)
This is a huge, cataclysmic decision, and merits its own article (as I wrote a few weeks ago). But more importantly, I want to talk about other potential crises facing the entertainment industry. What does this have to do with strategy, you may wonder? Everything! Industry leaders need to think around corners, so to speak, anticipating what’s coming next and especially assessing industry-wide risks. As always, ignore the hype and stay skeptical!
Now, will every potential crisis or systemic risk come to pass? Probably not. And none will likely have the death tolls of opioids. Still, industry leaders have to gauge the odds of something happening and weigh that against the potential harms. (The ethical considerations are a different discussion altogether…) But you can’t ignore looming crises.
I’ve organized the article by past, present, and future risks, so let’s dive right in.
Past: Social Media is Addictive and Harmful…How Does This Impact the Entertainment Industry?
The Evidence
At this point, there are mountains of evidence and study after study showing that social media addicts its users and harms people’s mental health. For just a sampling of research from the last year:
- Social media makes people depressed, anxious, stressed and sleep-deprived.
- Since the rise of social media in 2012, everything has gotten worse.
- Test scores are going down; so are people’s cognitive abilities.
- Social media leads to brain rot and irritability.
- Tweens’ social media use correlates with depression.
- Even teens think it’s harmful.
- Social media use leads to teens doing fewer enriching activities like sports, reading and art.
In this case, I’d suggest reading one of the main experts on the subject, Jonathan Haidt, who has a giant collaborative Google Doc that collects abstracts of every paper on the subject, pro and con. I’d suggest his recent article making the case that Facebook is addictive, along with two older articles from 2023 summarizing the research to that point.
The research matches what I’ve experienced myself (I hate social media, not only how distracting it is, but what it does to people and how they act online), what I’ve witnessed firsthand (like sitting in a room full of people during the holidays, but no one is talking to anyone else because they’re all on their phones), or heard from other people. Even social media’s biggest boosters often talk about how they can’t control how much time they spend on these platforms.
Now, I don’t think there’s a society-wide consensus (yet) that social media is harmful and needs to be regulated—unlike, say, alcohol, cigarettes, and/or carbon dioxide—but I think it’s quite easy to explain why: a majority of people in the media are also addicted to social media. In terms of cognitive dissonance, it’s hard for heavy social media users to admit that these platforms have issues.
So, setting aside ethical concerns—I wouldn’t, but just for now—if you work in Hollywood or the creator economy, you have to ask this question: what are the chances social media isn’t harmful/addictive? Again, when assessing risk, the first step is assessing the chances that a bad thing could happen.
Well, actually, as I wrote in the intro, that part of the assessment is settled. The jury is literally in at this point, ruling that social media is addictive. More lawsuits are coming.
More importantly, this has led to government action, at least with young people:
- At least 14 countries have either implemented a ban or are considering banning social media use by children and teens under the age of 16. A few states have passed or are considering similar bans
- 35 states have banned phone use in class and 26 ban them entirely.
Impacts on Hollywood/the Entertainment Industry
Long term, we’ll see how this impacts the bottom line of Facebook (Meta), YouTube (Alphabet), TikTok, Snap, and others. Frankly, some of these companies generate so much cash that I wonder if it matters much. I’ve called many of these companies “huge tech” in the past.
Still, the creator economy could feel the effects most. Will Google or Meta change the Facebook or YouTube algorithms? How will that impact payouts to creators? We’ll see.
But creators could still see an effect in the short term regardless. Countless countries are banning kids under the age of 16 from the platforms and banning phones in school; social media use (and ad dollars) will go down regardless. This will impact the creator economy financially, which is why more people should have taken these risks seriously and why pundits and commentators (myself included) should have worried about this much earlier.
If I’m a content creator, I’d ask two questions:
- How addictive is my platform?
- Can I diversify to other, non-addictive platforms?
Which, to be fair, is already happening. Mark Rober, Ms. Rachel, and Jordan and Salish Matter have signed deals with Netflix. To me, the loss at trial will increase that trend. Netflix, in this regard, is the big winner from this verdict, and I’d repeat a point I’ve made before that other streaming platforms should have been courting prominent YouTubers to their platform years ago.
For the rest of Hollywood…If you run, work at, or design the UX of a streamer, well, you probably need to analyze your platform’s addictiveness ASAP. If you’re making a push into vertical video, be careful! Should your streamer run autoplay? Maybe! Maybe not. Run the risk analysis. Internally, I’d ask these hard questions. I’d ask these questions, as well, for my partners, including Roblox and Fortnite.
Present: Gambling is Addictive and Harmful
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