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700 Billion Minutes
- 11/22/10
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Seven hundred billion minutes. That’s how much time Facebook’s 500 million active users spend on the site every month. 700,000,000,000 minutes. Let that one sink in for a moment. Every month we spend the equivalent of 1.3 million years on Facebook; the equivalent of nearly 18,000 lifetimes. More than half of us login every single day; we average 130 friends. And we spend vast amounts of time on there.
Facebook now offers 900 million different objects or pages for us to interact with—groups, events, community pages, and so on. We upload over 3 billion photographs every month (which means we’re uploading millions every hour).
Do you know what really blows my mind about all of this? Facebook is only 7 years old. Most of us have joined in only the past 2 or 3 years. The growth charts are out of this world:
So think about this one. Four years ago most of us did not use Facebook at all. And today we are using it compulsively. A recent study of media habits found that about 1/3 of women between 18 and 34 check Facebook before they even go to the bathroom in the morning; 21% check it in the middle of the night; half of them admit that they are addicted to it. Meanwhile the older generations, those in their 40’s and 50’s, are also migrating to social media; they now represent the fastest-growing population.
But again, 4 years ago most of us did not use it at all. We may have heard the name, but it was just a name. Today it’s a way of life. What’s important to think about is the fact that Facebook is not a site that offers us a better way of doing what we were already doing. It’s not like most of us were on another social media site and we then migrated once Facebook came along (with young people being a possible exception; many of them migrated from MySpace to Facebook). For the majority of us, Facebook is a new thing. Those 700 billion minutes are not minutes that we’ve taken away from other online pursuits. They are minutes that we’ve taken away from real life. Studies show that time spent interacting online comes at the expense of face-to-face relationships and about at a 2:1 ratio. So every hour we spend on Facebook comes at the expense of 30 minutes talking to a person face-to-face. 700 billion minutes are costing us 350 billion minutes of face time. And all of this for something we were living very well without just a few years ago.
This all begs the question: what are we actually doing with our Facebook time? Is what we do there significant enough that it merits the time we dedicate to it? What are we accomplishing with all of those minutes? What do you accomplish with your share of those 700 billion minutes?
A while back I suggested that we might be able to tell what our idols are by looking in our pockets and seeing what we need to have with us all the time. We can also tell what our idols are by seeing where we are spending our minutes and our days. There is clearly something about Facebook that has captivated us, something about it that has drawn us in. For many of us, it is now the place where we live our lives—18,000 of those life times every month.
I am a follower of Jesus Christ, a husband to Aileen and a father to three young children. I worship and serve as a pastor at 
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Comments (25)
Yep. Today I can tell you within 10 minutes which of my 200 friends had something great happen, which had something terrible happen, who needs congratulations, who needs encouragement, and who needs an ear to speak to.
4 years ago, I probably wouldn’t have found out the majority of these things, or if I did it would have been considerably delayed.
Now I know the right questions to ask and the right comments to make and when to make them.
At the same time that I do that, I can also get the top news stories around the world, check the weather/traffic, glance through a few blog titles to see what might be worth reading, and text some other friends.
In fact, I can do all of that in less time than it would have taken me to read a newspaper four years ago.
Oh yeah … and I also found this story because it was posted on my facebook, via twitter, directing me to a blog.
Technology.
I wonder how many people will use that handy “fshare” button under this article to share this on Facebook!
if only we could harness the processing power of facebook and that time to apply it to real world problems and move everyone forward.but we can also look to the flip side of this and know how scary it is to think of how many mobile devices are hooked to facebook as well it is a scary thought .The time we spend there and the amount of info they have on us. and there as far as I know no way to fully get your data out of facebook.
Some of those stats are a bit scary! I don’t think I’ve checked it in the middle of the night, but then, I don’t usually wake up until morning anyway. Intriguing to see the growth chart(I joined way back in April/May ‘05, when the growth was quite “flat”!).
Thanks for the reminder to be cautious with our time on Facebook. Indeed we need to be purposeful in our use of it, not merely as a means of distracting ourselves from responsibilities and those people closest to us.
I do see Facebook as a great communication medium and aid to encouragement. Like Mike mentioned above, I’m much more aware of different issues in my friends’ lives and I’ve been able to build relationships with non-Christians that would not have happened without Facebook. And yet in all these things, we should seek to glorify God.
Thanks for the illuminating article, Tim!
One of the great uses of Twitter and Facebook will be to prove at the Last Day that prayerlessness was not from lack of time. — John Piper
Just like any other tool ,Facebook needs to be kept within a proper perspective. I find it useful to keep in touch with people that in the past ,you would have lost all contact with because of distance. Plus I don’t really buy into the stat it lessons the face to face contact. It may for some , but I use it to arrange coffee with friends and family . It can become a bad habit like anything that is new but the good far out ways the bad . May we indeed use it for God’s glory .
Love Mike’s comment. I’m an over 65 yr. old facebook user. Am glad to say I have friends on fb who I’ve never met in person, yet met on one of the games - farm town - with it’s own chat box. Awesome way to minister, be a listening ear, provide encouragement, and provide something to think on in my status updates. I was a volunteer in the Christian Women Today chat room! What an amazing outreach! Of course, person to person is preferable, but this new technology is here to stay and imho can be a useful tool for all of us in the Kingdom.
This is a great quote. I heard it before and try to always keep it in mind.
I’m not a “facebooker” so much, as I am a “blogger”. But I spend too much time on these things, and too much time watching TV too.And yet God’s grace is still amazing. He is unbelievably gracious, and uses even this for His gospel and glory. In spite of my flesh, which is quite weak, He uses the little bit of willing spirit to work in me to will and to do His will.
Good post to make us think. Thanks.
ps I got to thinking today, when I heard the song: “There Will Be a Day”, that when the time comes when we will inheirit the new earth in our new bodies, there shall be pure righteousness in all the universe, and 10,000,000 years later we will have no less time to sing praises to our Lord. God will annihilate all evil and wickedness. It will vanish completely and without a trace. And some of this wickedness will be billions of human souls. And I should have been one of those souls that will be sent out of the presence of Christ and God.”But God….” Eph. 2:4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le-TG4sRRiQ&feature=related
Facebook is for losers. Why waste time on that, when you could be playing Lord of the Rings Online! ;-)
To bad we can’t compare and contrast these numbers with the millions of Christians on the planet and how much time they spend in their Bible. Would we be surprised at how close they are or would Facebook outweigh the Bible time by a lot.
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Tim, I enjoyed your article but I’d like to encourage you to avoid “the sky is falling” tenor. Yes there are potential pitfalls with any new medium of communication including Facebook. But as Mike pointed out, there are also opportunities for the edification of the body. A blending of depravity and common grace is present in every new technology or development.
Oooooo, OUCH. I hate being such an ugly statistic!!
I bailed on Facebook over a year ago for several reasons, so I am not a Facebook apologist. But, I would respond to Tim’s implied question: “Where is the time coming from?” by pointing him to plummeting TV ratings. I think that, by and large, people are turning on Facebook when they used to turn on the tube.
Of course, they could be turning both on, fully engaging with neither, and flattening their attention levels even further. Scary thought.
“What’s important to think about is the fact that Facebook is not a site that offers us a better way of doing what we were already doing.”
COMPLETELY disagree with this. Through FB, I have grown closer to my family and neighbors. I have reconnected with people long forgotten.
FB is replacing something. It’s replacing the sad, ugly automobile driven faux ‘communities’ that we have built over the last hundred years. It’s a commentary on these old dysfunctional communities that a computer program can replace them.
We lived the older paradigm for so long that we completely forgot how bad it was. The internet is giving us a way to reconnect. That’s a great thing for people, a great thing for communities, and a great thing for the Gospel.
Don’t try and get out! Once you are in it’s nearly impossible to get rid of the thing. I think that I’m finally out but I’m not sure.
Wow, you really hit a nerve, Tim. Good for you. How we spend so much of our time is a topic that SHOULD be addressed, no matter what our excuses or justifications are for doing so. So much defensiveness. Me thinks thou dost protest too much, people…..time to do some soul searching. Facebook “relationships” can be very shallow, requiring very little of people. So many people are too wrapped up in themselves already, and facebook just perpetuates that problem. But so do other things….just add facebook to the list of things we use to glorify ourselves, to become distracted from the one thing that really matters - glorifying God. If you are truly using facebook to glorify God, then more power to you. But I would bet that those people are in the minority. Which group are you in?
I get your point and I agree with it.
There are positives to FB. Four years ago, I talked to my parents via the phone 1x a month and they called me 1x a month. Now my kids get to talk to their grandparents every day.
But I agree the negatives of FB have outweighed the positives at least in our home. It has allowed my very introverted personality to border on near anti-social, as I’m far less inclined to make and maintain real life friendships. And while I may know at a keystroke what is going on all over the world, I sometimes miss what is going on right under my nose.
In a manner of speaking, Scott nailed it. At least in essence.
Facebook is essentially an interactive portal to whatever interests us, but its down side is that it’s largely trivial. In the process of looking for interesting bits of information, it’s often like searching for gemstones on a beach or reading my own custom-crafted e-paper. Before I know it, a half-hour or more is gone - I chose that time out of habit to look at Facebook, but I didn’t really consider other valuable options. I could have read a few pages of a book, even my Bible as Scott said. Or I could have engaged myself in Bible study on some issue. Or turned my head to initiate a conversation with my wife. Or read to my kids if they’re still up. I am not going to say that Facebook is all bad, but it does tend to undermine intentional, active living for many of us, who, like myself, are information junkies, obsessed to find out “what’s new today”.
One reason I look at Facebook is that my wife is watching a show that I couldn’t care less about. And I can be in the same room looking at Facebook because it doesn’t require much concentration. Or maybe she’s taking her cue to watch TV because I’m online. That’s an example of how Facebook (or TV watching) can be a “consolation” activity. You’re stuck at home, you’re not going anywhere, you rush to fill the vacuum.
It’s not to say Facebook has no positives, or we wouldn’t be on it at all. What is undisputably true is that it does have some inherent negatives and it’s easy to let oneself be mastered by it.
That number might be a bit mis-leading. I, for one, log in and only ever log out if my browser crashes or I shutdown/reboot my computer. I know my wife is the same way. That being said, I can go for days without ever looking at it and only then for a couple of minutes to see what someone has posted. I suspect I am not the only one who logs in and stays online without actually using Facebook during that time.
Just my 2cents
Ouch!
700 billion minutes divided by half billion people divided by 30 days per month comes to just under 47 minutes per day. Hardly something to get alarmist/alarmed about.
I agree that the usage growth of facebook is an almost unbelievable phenomenon. But I’m not sure the cumulative minutes spent using it by all users is really that significant of a statistic. It is merely an extension of the vast numbers of users. The average time spent per day per user would be more telling. Your article doesn’t mention that time.I probably spend between 30-60 minutes per day on fb. This allows me to keep in touch with 30 to 40 people (most daily) whom I value as family, “friends” or acquaintances that I would probably not be in contact with more than once every few week without the convenience of fb, because they are removed from me by hundreds of miles and often many time zones. I also would not read nearly as much valuable communication from Tim Challies ;-), John MacArthur, Al Mohler, et al. Some even from the “grave” like Spurgeon, Calvin, Lloyd-Jones and a few others. I personally would hate to see it go away but like anything in life you have to use it reasonably and to the Glory of God (which I think is very possible).
Right now I have 31 friends on facebook. I would delete each and every one of them except for one my sister Stella who lives in Washington State, I live in New York. Growing up we were placed in different foster families. We saw each other only rarely. Each day it’s nice to hear from my sister and see pictures of her beautiful daughters. I love keeping in touch with her that way. I also send her pictures and updates on how my family is doing. I dont feel it is wasted time.. I’m not sure we would have a relationship if we did not have facebook. Sure we could talk on the phone or send each other letter in the mail. Facebook allows us to communicate in a more visual way. We do talk on the phone. So I think like everything else Facebook is a communication tool and how you use it is between you and God.
As a former moderate user of both Facebook and Twitter, I thought about the time spent on it, and decided to bail out. I shut down my Twitter account and, for a time, my Facebook account also. I’m back on Facebook because a few close friends complained that they wanted to hear from me more and they had enjoyed the updates on FB. I have trimmed my friends list down to just over 30 close friends and family members. The test I use is whether I would want to spend a month snowed in in a cabin with them (except for certain family members, but you have to make concessions there). I’m trying to spend more time reading deeper, rather than wider, to combat this constant distracted feeling I was getting. I hear the argument about using these social media tools for the glory of God, but I’m not so sure that flies, when you really examine it, for most.