Is social media fueling the economic angst
This explains things a little bit to me:
Look at economic data, and you’d think that young voters would be riding high right now. Unemployment remains low. Job opportunities are plentiful. Inequality is down, wage growth is finally beating inflation, and the economy has expanded rapidly this year.
Look at TikTok, and you get a very different impression — one that seems more in line with both consumer confidence data and President Biden’s performance in political polls.
Several of the economy-related trends getting traction on TikTok are downright dire. The term “Silent Depression” recently spawned a spate of viral videos. Clips critical of capitalism are common. On Instagram, jokes about poor housing affordability are a genre unto themselves.
Social media reflects — and is potentially fueling — a deep-seated angst about the economy that is showing up in surveys of younger consumers and political polls alike. It suggests that even as the job market booms, people are focusing on long-running issues like housing affordability as they assess the economy.
The economic conversation taking place virtually may offer insight into the stark disconnect between optimistic economic data and pessimistic feelings, one that has puzzled political strategists and economists.
Never before was consumer sentiment this consistently depressed when joblessness was so consistently low. And voters rate Mr. Biden badly on economic matters despite rapid growth and a strong job market. Young people are especially glum: A recent poll by The New York Times and Siena College found that 59 percent of voters under 30 rated the economy as “poor.”
That’s where social media could offer insight. Popular interest drives what content plays well — especially on TikTok, where going viral is often the goal. The platforms are also an important disseminator of information and sentiment.
“A lot of people get their information from TikTok, but even if you don’t, your friends do, so you still get looped into the echo chamber,” said Kyla Scanlon, a content creator focused on economic issues who posts carefully researched explainers across TikTok, Instagram and X.
Ms. Scanlon rose to prominence in the traditional news media in part for coining and popularizing the term “vibecession” for how bad consumers felt in 2022 — but she thinks 2023 has seen further souring.
“I think people have gotten angrier,” she said. “I think we’re actually in a worse vibecession now.”
Surveys suggest that people in Generation Z, born after 1996, heavily get their news from social media and messaging apps. And the share of U.S. adults who turn to TikTok in particular for information has been steadily climbing. Facebook is still a bigger news source because it has more users, but about 43 percent of adults who use TikTok get news from it regularly, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center.
It is difficult to say for certain whether negative news on social media is driving bad feelings about the economy, or about the Biden administration. Data and surveys struggle to capture exactly what effect specific news delivery channels — particularly newer ones — have on people’s perceptions, said Katerina Eva Matsa, director of news and information research at the Pew Research Center.
“Is the news — the way it has evolved — making people view things negatively?” she asked. It’s hard to tell, she explained, but “how you’re being bombarded, entangled in all of this information might have contributed.”
In my opinion there is little doubt that Tik Tok is making younger people feel like shit in a million different ways. And I don’t think there’s any doubt that a lot of it is being manipulated by malevolent actors, foreign and domestic.
The young people in my life are doing better economically and they know it. They aren’t out there lamenting the price of eggs because they really weren’t aware of what the prices were before the pandemic induced inflation anyway. Their main thing is wages and jobs which are much improved. They do legitimately complain about housing but it’s not a recent thing. They’ve been stuck still living at home or sharing space with others for quite some time and they see it as a normal, if frustrating, fact of life. None of them are Tik Tok people though. They hang on Youtube and Instagram.
That’s just my personal experience but I do think there’s something happening on TikTok that’s very toxic. Some of it’s great. I enjoy the comedy myself. But this other stuff, like the bin Laden letter being circulated with a positive mention and getting millions of views is creepy. And I think this negative “vibe” is creepy too.