As 2020 came to an end, we began to see brand new frightening statistics. One shocking prediction from Statista is that social media corporations in the United States are projected to make more than 50 billion dollars from its users in 2021. 

Yes, this is the harmless social media that we use to avoid conversation and eye contact with people in public places. How could companies make 50 billion dollars off something so free and entertaining? 

Social media has ads of course but that can’t generate that much profit, right? Actually, it can if people spend more time on social media every day. According to Statista, people’s daily social media usage time was 126 minutes in 2016, 135 minutes in 2017, 142 minutes in 2018, and is steadily increasing with time.  

The world is expected to reach 3 billion people on social media by the end of 2021 as well, meaning more and more profit for companies. However, these are not the only fronts that they are gaining from. 

Social media ad impressions are increasing by around 20% every year, meaning that more people are seeing ads. Even YouTube increased the number of ads that they show during ad breaks and even between videos last year.  

More and more people are seeing ads on social media, and one would think that this would deter users from those apps and drive them to apps with lower ad counts. However, there is and has been a collective push from social media companies to make a higher profit.  

Social media has become more addictive, entertaining, and attention stealing than it has ever been. Ads do not matter when the user is so hooked that seeing ads during their experience is preferable to setting their phone down.  

The social media market does not care about its users. It exists only to make a profit and to weed out smaller companies that could steal profit from the larger ones, and then destroy them. The user is the product being sold to advertisers, and there is a surplus of products.  

Social media companies rake in a huge fortune at the expense of normal people who just want to look at cute animals. It distracts people from the real world and real relationships, unconsciously dividing us. 

These new statistics from Statista show how terrifyingly far social media has entered our lives, and how much large corporations make from its users.