

1/500th of humanity's time is spent on Facebook - RoboTeddy

More than 350 million active users; Average user spends more than 55 minutes per day on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics)<p>(6.7 billion * 24 hours)/(350 million * 55 minutes) = 500<p>It's unclear how they're measuring time spent on the site, but most of Facebook's statistics seem to be honest (they only count active users, etc).
======
jhancock
Google is getting so incredibly fast. As I'm reading this, your post is 16
minutes old. I copy/pasted your calculation into google search just to see how
well the google calculator would interpret it. Your post here shows up as the
first result. Now, I may expect it to show up first but within 16 minutes and
assuming nothing else links to this content yet?

~~~
rms
Google indexes this site very fast. I think it probably happens within 5
minutes.

Let's give it a try. It's 10:26PM EST.

This is a very obscure phrase that no one else ever uses.

~~~
personamb
2 minutes later, it's there. This is a very obscure phrase that no one else
ever uses. ... hackerne.ws/item?id=973578 - 1 minute ago

~~~
mlinsey
Going even further off-topic, the sheer speed of Google's updates is one
reason why I have felt that the pain-point of "real-time search" is overrated.

~~~
tlrobinson
If you were able to sort the results by "last updated" then I might agree, but
AFAIK you can't.

With Twitter Search you can easily see the most recent results first.

~~~
harpastum
You _can_ sort by date in a google search. Click on "Show Options" just below
the search field, and about 15 lines down in the left bar, "Sorted By Date."

I think it's a fairly recent feature, but it's there.

------
SlyShy
Grudging upvote. One of the most depressing sights I see these days is lecture
halls full of students on Facebook. I guess a lot of students don't care about
red black trees or strongly connected components, despite ostensibly seeking a
CS degree.

~~~
mechanical_fish
I'm sure that no more students care today than cared back in my day. Which is
to say: At least half of them don't care.

But there's more to it than that. Lectures suck as a means of learning about
red-black trees. Unless the lecturer is literally _world-class_ , I can better
spend my time by watching the world-class version of the lecture on iTunes U.
Or by reading the best book on the subject -- books move faster than lectures,
except when you need to slow down and think, in which case they obligingly
slow down for you.

Of course, while lectures are a fairly low-efficiency way to learn many
subjects, it is necessary to give them at least a little attention in order to
learn about what will be on the specific test that the professor will give you
at the end of the term. And, of course, some lecturers are world-class. If you
find one, put Facebook away, for god's sake!

~~~
gaborcselle
"I can better spend my time by watching the world-class version of the lecture
on iTunes U."

That's a really good insight.

There needs to be a site where I can go to to watch the best possible
explanation for any concept. Something like a Wikipedia for videos.

~~~
SapphireSun
Isn't wikimedia trying to build wikiversity? The last time I went there it was
piss poor compared to wikipedia articles, but it made an attempt to read like
an introductory text.

------
chaosmachine
Who wants to do a calculation for TV?

~~~
winter_blue
On a conservative estimate 1/50th.

(6.7 billion * 24 hours)/(3 billion * 1 hour) = ~50

~~~
mbrubeck
According to Nielsen, the United States alone watches about 1.4 billion hours
of television per day, so 3 billion worldwide is probably not _too_ far off:
[http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/nielsen-
news/americans-w...](http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/nielsen-
news/americans-watching-more-tv-than-ever/)

In fact, with India and China together having about 4 times as many TV
households as the US, I bet the total is significantly higher than 3 billion
hours, probably more like 10 or 20 billion (1/16 to 1/8 of humanity's time).
[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/11/business/yourmoney/11india...](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/11/business/yourmoney/11india.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1259816545-4bENRED4Tq8vigEkNyxRng)
[http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/search/article_display.j...](http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/search/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001050615)

1/5 of human life in the US is spent watching television. Probably around
5-10% of human life worldwide. Now _that's_ cognitive surplus. Obligatory Clay
Shirky link: [http://www.shirky.com/herecomeseverybody/2008/04/looking-
for...](http://www.shirky.com/herecomeseverybody/2008/04/looking-for-the-
mouse.html)

------
RevRal
I'm on the edge of whether or not this sounds like a ridiculous number.

It would take the equivalent of 500 human lives for 1 human life to be wasted
on Facebook.

For some reason I'm just not feeling a response to this; though, I'm going to
have to think about it some more.

~~~
gloob
By way of comparison:

About 60 000 American soldiers died in the Vietnam War, out of a total
population of roughly 200 million Americans.

That works out to one American life lost for every 3333 (ish) Americans.

Even if we ignore the fact that Americans are almost certainly wildly
overrepresented on Facebook relative to the rest of the world, the website is
six times as destructive to the U.S.

Tongue firmly in cheek, incidentally.

------
storborg
Since Facebook has the ability to asynchronously measure the amount of time
the page is open (rather than just the amount of time you're actively
requesting new pages) I expect this number somewhat overestimates the amount
of time that people are actually _focusing_ on Facebook.

I leave email clients, twitter, etc open a lot. By the raw numbers, it could
be said that I spend more than half of my waking life using an email client.

------
kwamenum86
People who spend that much time on Facebook would likely "waste" their time in
some other way if the site did not exist.

[Edit] But that makes the figure no less staggering.

~~~
SlyShy
Facebook is just the Solitaire of the younger generation. ;)

~~~
RevRal
You know, you have a good point.

In high school, I was pretty shocked when my mom sat down with me and my
buddies to play Tetris. And she actually whooped on us.

What was going on became very clear to me when her only complaint was that the
controls weren't on a keyboard; she could only have gotten that good by
wasting her time playing the game at some old job or school.

It is also funny to note that she had no conception of the competitive aspect
of the multilayer modernization of Tetris, even though she was flailing bricks
at us the entire time.

------
johnrob
If you assume that people are sleeping 8 hours per night, that number becomes
1/333.

~~~
RoboTeddy
and if you furthermore only look at internet users (there are 1.7 billion of
them), it goes to 1/84

------
ronnier
Sometime ago I delete my facebook account. One of the primary reasons was the
time wasted on it that could be better spent doing something productive. I was
adding no value to my life by using it.

~~~
krallja
Did it work, or did you find something else to waste time on?

~~~
unalone
I deleted my Facebook account just a few weeks ago, along with my Google
account. I don't like feeling dependence.

My Google account is still gone — turns out it wasn't giving me much value
besides the email, and I hated my Gmail name so not much loss there. But I
restored Facebook within 24 hours. I have too many people that I can't talk to
in any other way. While I enjoyed the freedom, I enjoyed the friends much
more.

So I restored my account, but deleted _every_ friend I thought to be
nonessential. I wound up with nine friends, each of whom I'm constantly in
some state of conversation with. So I can't waste time as easily — I don't
write notes as much, I'm rarely tagged in photos by them — but I'm still able
to use it to talk.

That's what I love about Facebook's design. It's granular. You can choose to
barely use it at all and it still gives you some value.

------
winstonsmith
The average time spent per user is not the same as the time spent by the
average user. The former is the mean time and is what is needed for the
calculation (in place of 55 minutes); the latter is the median time.

On the other hand, the mean is at least half of the median, so at least 1/1000
of humanity's time is spent on Facebook (if the other assumptions are
correct).

------
dasil003
Makes me wonder if Facebook will ever decide they've pursued engagement far
enough and that they have an ethical obligation to actually deliver more value
even if it comes at the expense of engagement.

~~~
SapphireSun
Unless they are implanting electrodes in your pleasure centers or are
affecting the GDP in a large measurable way, I'm pretty sure ethics aren't
really coming into play. After all, they are providing a useful service.

~~~
unalone
True that. They've simplified communication for their demographic immensely. I
talk to people more on Facebook than I'd be able to in actual conversation,
because it's such a nonlinear process.

------
Shamiq
[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%286.7+billion+*+24+hou...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%286.7+billion+*+24+hours%29%2F%28350+million+*+55+minutes%29+)

------
baazil1
Uhh, where is the share button to Facebook?

------
pwnstigator
How is this measured? I'm sure I have a tab open for that long, but I don't
spend more than 5-10 minutes per week actually using it.

1/500 of humanity's time spent with an open browser tab of Facebook doesn't
seem nearly as impressive.

~~~
blasdel
Facebook tracks actual activity, not just the tab being open, and they expose
this to your friends by default: Facebook IM!

    
    
      They know when you're sleeping
      They know when you're awake
      They know if you've been bad or good
      So be good for goodness sake!

