Likes, Shares, Follows, Favourites… If you’re lucky enough to work in marketing, as I do, you’ll know how obsessed advertisers have become with these small signs of approval. For example:

“Our Bank Holiday picture of a rabbit got 100 Retweets! A measure of success! Campaign virality!” says everyone in social media, all of the time. But this doesn’t just apply to the media industry… Real-life Facebookers and Tweeters all over the globe are posting their thoughts, LOLs and rants to everyone that will listen, and then waiting with baited breath until they see that happy little thumbs up of positive reinforcement from a friend or former colleague. “Aaaaaaaaah”, they sigh. “3 Likes. Approval received” (#bliss).

In our quest to monetise and quantify social media from a business perspective (like we’ve done with every other media channel), we’ve run the risk of becoming too clinical. Buying Facebook fans and Twitter followers, desperate to make social media campaigns ‘work’ and then giving a famous blogger oodles of cash to review the latest lip gloss.

This has worked for a while, as our favourite social media spaces have become more and more commercial. But what if – God forbid – we’re all starting to become immune to social media? What if it just doesn’t move us, emotionally, like it used to? Have we spent so long being shocked and outraged by social media stimulus that users are starting to get a bit bored?

I obsessively watched X Factor last year, totally glued to my screen. But after sitting down with the TV on and Twitter in hand, it seemed that hardly anyone was talking about it anymore. On social media, at least. Conversely, I remember ‘back in the day’ I would spend more time tweeting about the programme than actually watching it.

With this in mind, deep in our laboratory, we have a hunch that many social media feeds were becoming like wallpaper. With shorter attention spans and a greater need to be shocked, it’s harder than ever to make an impact on people’s lives. We’ve all seen the comments about Facebook suggesting that teenagers are leaving the platform in their droves, but my job is to see if that’s actually true.

We partnered with CrowdEmotion to find out. These guys are able to use facial coding software linked to a webcam that reads people’s micro-expressions to get to the core of how they really feel. It’s authentic and very difficult to manipulate since it measures physical - not claimed - reactions.

We created fictional social media content and stories, and then tested them within a Facebook feed environment on a panel of users to measure what gets social media users going. Our fictional stories included selfies, baby pictures, Upworthy (‘you’ll never guess what happens next’) headlines, sponsored posts from brands, a check-in to Heathrow Terminal 5, and a few other common social media sightings.

The results were shocking. Less than 20% of stories in social media now generate any kind of emotional response in consumers. That’s any kind of emotion. A glimmer of joy, a touch of despair, even a smidgen of confusion. Our suspicions seemed to be correct - users are now flicking through each other’s social lives as flippantly as they would the Argos catalogue, with only the very occasional post prompting a reaction.

We found that it was only when people were shown something outside of the norm did they pay attention and respond – shocking, offensive and super cute images were amongst those that caused a stir. A newborn baby, a ‘what’s your ideal job’ quiz and a picture of a TOWIE cast member in a thong were amongst the posts that generated an emotional response, the latter sparking confusion, disgust, and for many - just amusement. The only controversial piece of content was a selfie of a young woman, which generated pleasure in men, but disgust in women. We didn’t ask respondents why though, of course…

So it seems in social media we’re getting used to these big splashes and tend to now prefer them (emotionally) to a simple, normal conversation. The normal just doesn’t interest us anymore.

Is it a little worrying? I have this vision of a scary dystopian Black Mirror-esque future where social media becomes just a series of shocking pictures - seen and forgotten in an instant. Maybe we’re not quite there yet, but it’ll be interesting to see what happens next. #NakedThursdays? The ‘set your toes on fire’ challenge? People nominating which of their friends they want to see down a pint of urine?

Oh yeah, that one has already happened….

Maybe it’s not too far away in the future then.

By Amy Kean, Head of Futures at Havas Media. 

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