In today’s post, I will discuss digital labour on social media. Digital labour refers to many forms of work and activities that are conveyed through digital platforms such as social media or search engines.
Social media is such an important part of my life, and I think that I spend more than half of my free time on it. Indeed, I am the kind of person who checks social media just after waking up. Every morning, I look on Instagram, and usually, watch stories of my friends and a few celebrities. I don’t really interact with stories in general, I just look at them to keep me updated. On school days, I also look at TikTok while getting ready. In general, during the day, I don’t look at social media, I go on social media again after going home. Most days, I am on social media, Instagram, TikTok or YouTube until going to bed.
If I take yesterday as an example following this routine, what ‘labour’ did I do?
Yesterday, my ‘labour’ constituted mainly social media engagement and data extraction. Indeed, on Instagram, I watch people’s stories. I often like content, save and share it with my friends or family if I think they will enjoy it. On TikTok, I do the same but also often leave comments. On YouTube, I also like content and sometimes save it in my playlists for later. These activities seen as leisure are a form of digital labour. Indeed, simply using digital platforms such as social media, or search engines is ‘labour’. Despite having different forms of usage, most digital platforms use the same business model based on targeted advertising and turning users’ data into commodities.
How does this work?
Every time, you use digital platforms such as search engines or social media, the platforms get data about you (your age, gender, where you live, what you like, your interests…), and then, these data are turned into commodities kept by platforms to be used or sold to other companies. For instance, the information given by data allows Facebook to deliver targeted ads, as the platform know your preferences. In addition, as brands need to pay to promote their products on digital platforms, the main winners in these economic agreements are the digital platforms as they receive money from brands to advertise their products and users are not getting paid for giving their data. Thus, just by using digital platforms, users generate profits for platforms. This practice is not new, in the 1970s, Smythe (1977) already argued that audience time (TV) was sold as a commodity to advertisers.
But are we adequately rewarded for this work?
If we consider that the production of data by digital platforms a ‘work’, then, we are unpaid workers and not rewarded for our contribution. We are gaining nothing from this ‘work’ and it seems more like the contrary, digital platforms and brands are gaining from us, users. As a great user of social media, I am always coming across ads on my social media. These ads specially targeted to me often influence me to buy products. Indeed, as a fashion enthusiast, I often begin to follow fashion brands through their ads and even sometimes end up buying their pieces of clothing. Thus, in addition to stealing my ‘work’, they take my money.
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