Some of the Biggest Economies Aren't a Big User Of Social Media (axios.com)

From a report: Only 37 percent of Germans use social media, according to a new Pew survey, a surprising figure given the fact that Germany is the world's fourth-largest economy by GDP, according to the World Economic Forum. Similar patterns follow for Japan, France and Italy, ranked 3rd, 6th and 8th in largest economy by GDP.

Comments

Germany will increase

[turkeydance]

when the refugees are counted

Why is this surprising?

[presidenteloco]

Gabbing, food-plate moneyshots, selfie-admiration and laughing at animals does not necessarily lead to productivity.

Maybe they don't need social media

[StikyPad]

Maybe they have in-person communities and social interactions. We Americans are far more socially isolated from the people around us and geographically isolated from our long-term friends and family than most other countries I've visited.

Re:Maybe they don't need social media

[Anonymous Coward]

"We Americans are far more socially isolated from the people around us..."

Actually, I think that you've got it sideways.
If you read upon the history of American Cultures... Americans are Joiners. At one time they joined the Elks, and Kiwanis, and Odd Fellows and Masons. Colleges had Fraternities and Sororities, kids joined Scouting and 4H and Little League. Organized local Social interaction was the Norm.
Perhaps it was the result of the very rootlessness of American Society, where entire Families didn't stay in small communities for Generations, if not Centuries, and put down roots and had to learn to live with their neighbors... if not their relatives. (Some noted that Americans tended to make friends quickly... and forget them just as quickly.)
Participation in all of these organizations is way down over the last few decades. Our town is down to two Scout Troops; there used to be a dozen, back when it was a quarter of the size. 4H is Dead; they tore down the Masonic Hall and put in a parking lot for the Movieplex across the street.

Many Americans join Virtual communities now, and spend their time Socializing behind a keyboard or a phone. Part of this _is_ work-related, in that the concept of having a job for life followed by a Pension is gone, and people move around even more often these days. Phoenix, Arizona, had a population of around 100K in 1950; it's more like 1.6M now. No city in Europe had that kind of growth since WWII. Oslo claims to be the fastest growing European City, but its population is up only 50% since 1950.
I should note that Slashdot is about the closest I get to Social Media these days, and even then there is only so much that I can take of it in any given day.
I should also note that I've been in this town for five decades, and everybody that I knew growing up either moved away, or died.

Germany has a long history of data privacy concern

[Livinginthedatabase]

I've been working with social media across Europe for the best part of the last 10 years (being German myself and working in London), and during that time, social media have generally been handled with a huge amount of skepticism in Germany. Private data protection and consumer protection are very important topics in German politics, and whenever Facebook overextends its reach, you can be sure to read about it in all the newspapers. Data privacy watchdogs have reprimanded Facebook on several occasions. Germany was, as far as I am aware, the first country to force Facebook to filter both fake news and hate speech. All of that is constantly making the news, and Facebook is pretty much "the" social network. Twitter has an entirely different problem - the German language tend to be far more complicated than English. What fits into 140 characters in English can easily reach 200 characters in German, and even then be very imprecise. Most Germans tend to use it as a glorified news feed, less as something interactive.

Speaking of CIA project...

[DrYak]

Social media - also known as mind hive CIA project

Speaking of which : notice how nearly all cited countries - Germany, France and Italy - are in Europe, and we European tend to be really serious about our privacy.
And Japan is similarly concerned with privacy and not intruding onto other people.

And that not only classical social networks (like Facebook).
That's also the case with chat systems. WhatsApp seems to be not as popular there are elsewhere in the world. You could find actually lots of german who prefere/have switched to other systems (basically : systems with more green checks on FSF's list)

Aging population centers as well.

[jellomizer]

A lot of these economies are also suffering from a aging workforce where the number of young people are not taking over the older employees jobs, because they are not enough of them to do so. This in the short term is good for a countries economy having a labor force filled with skilled workers who do not have much overhead with children, so they can use their money to buy things, and take risks that wouldn't be wise if you are younger and have a mortgage and car payments and are a couple months away from being broke without your job. These older people have their homes paid off, so they can spend of more stuff and take financial risks which normally will be rewarding.
However in the long term they will die out and not be able to replace the workforce, and if ignored for too long, that workforce that does come in, will not have any cross training from the previous generation and make the same mistakes over again.
We have been wasting time for generations, social media is the newest form, but how far away is it, from water cooler talk, or going out during lunch and getting a bit tipsy.

Privacy

[DrYak]

does not necessarily lead to productivity.

Though, as mentionned by TFA (sorry, I read it, here I'll turn in my /. member card) they are even more obsessed with their privacy, as a significant part of Europe is.

The other country are also European (Italy, France) or similarly obsessed with privacy and averse to intrusion (Japan).

Seems that the US is actually the anomaly, having a high GDP *but* happily providing all their personal information to be abused by marketeers/advertiser, by three-letter agencies, and by pirates leaking databases and personal photo collections.

Re:Privacy

[cayenne8]

Seems that the US is actually the anomaly, having a high GDP *but* happily providing all their personal information to be abused by marketeers/advertiser, by three-letter agencies, and by pirates leaking databases and personal photo collections.

I dunno if it is so much "happily provide", but likely last not, too uneducated, ill-informed, or ignorant of the fact that massive data even IS being collected on them, much less the implications of such massive data collection and analyzation can do the people and their privacy.

I'm guessing that sure, a lot of folks wouldn't care, but I would posit that the majority of the populace using social media even is NOT aware of the massive information collection going on, nor how it is used.

Original Article

[InfiniteZero]

From pewresearch.org:

http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...

Re:Germany has a long history of data privacy conc

[Cro Magnon]

Twitter has an entirely different problem - the German language tend to be far more complicated than English. What fits into 140 characters in English can easily reach 200 characters in German, and even then be very imprecise. Most Germans tend to use it as a glorified news feed, less as something interactive.

Good point. All it takes is a few of those long German words, and they're already over the 140 limit.

This isn't surprising at all

[istartedi]

What we call "social media" is really young, and a huge recession took place during that time. You could snap your fingers, make FaceBook disappear, and the economy at large would not really feel it. Just 10 years ago, nobody was using this crap and things were just fine.

Germany

[PPH]

... is actually interested in producing things. Not how to keep their population distracted with bread and circuses.

Re:Germany

[Sique]

Germany has the best bread anyway. I don't know about circus though.

So what this says is...

[ugen]

What this tells us is that people in developed economies who are productive and satisfied with their lives do not have much desire to waste their time on "virtual existance" and other pursuits of vanity and persistent stimulation.

Re:Social media is a false economy

[PPH]

or be used as a product.

To paraphrase Warren Buffett (about suckers): Look around the economy. If you can't see the products, you are it.

Ham radio license stats are also interesting.

[ctrl-alt-canc]

Amateur radio licenses vs. population. Apart Japan (where aged people represent most of the population - ham radio is mostly a hobby for old people), France, Germany, Italy and other industrialized countries show a negligible interest into ham radio. Together with the results described in TFA, one could argue that wasting time into social media isn't a good way to be productive.

Is there a lesson here?

[mi]

Some of the Biggest Economies Aren't a Big User Of Social Media

Is there a lesson here? Maybe, use of Social Media impedes the economic growth?

Productivity is inversely correlated with facebook

[RobinH]

That sounds about right to me. People focused on productivity probably don't bother with facebook accounts or anything. It's too big a waste of time. I also turned off email notifications and I leave my phone on airplane mode most of the time. Interruptions are a real time waster.