1282.经济学人-The end of the social network-2

This matters, because social media are how people experience the internet.

Facebook itself counts more than 3bn users. Social apps take up nearly half of mobile screen time, which in turn consumes more than a quarter of waking hours. They gobble up 40% more time than they did in 2020, as the world has gone online.

As well as being fun, social media are the crucible of online debate and a catapult for political campaigns.

In a year when half the world heads to the polls, politicians from Donald Trump to Narendra Modi will be busy online.

The striking feature of the new social media is that they are no longer very social.

Inspired by TikTok, apps like Facebook increasingly serve a diet of clips selected by artificial intelligence according to a user’s viewing behaviour, not their social connections.

Meanwhile, people are posting less. The share of Americans who say they enjoy documenting their life online has fallen from 40% to 28% since 2020.

Debate is moving to closed platforms, such as WhatsApp and Telegram.

1

这很重要，因为社交媒体是人们体验互联网的方式。

2

Facebook本身就有超过30亿用户。社交应用程序占据了近一半的手机屏幕时间，这反过来又消耗了超过四分之一的清醒时间。随着世界联网，他们花费的时间比2020年多了40%。

3

社交媒体不仅有趣，而且还是在线辩论的熔炉和政治运动的弹射器。

4

在世界一半人参加投票的一年里，从Donald Trump到Narendra Modi的政客将在网上忙碌。

5

新社交媒体的显着特征是它们不再具有很强的社交性。

6

受TikTok 的启发，Facebook等应用程序越来越多地提供人工智能根据用户的观看行为而不是社交关系选择的剪辑片段。

7

与此同时，发帖的人越来越少。自2020年以来，表示喜欢在网上记录生活的美国人比例已从40% 下降至 28%。

8

辩论正在转向封闭平台，例如 WhatsApp 和 Telegram。