Every year, Bond Capital’s Mary Meeker produces an immense slide deck of internet trends. You can see the whole thing here. I’ve chosen two slides to highlight. First, there’s this one. Before you look, see if you can figure out what I find interesting about it.

Granted, this is only two years of data, but what I found interesting was how static it is. YouTube and Instagram have grown, but the other platforms are all basically flat. There’s nothing new making much of an impact in the social media space, and Facebook, for all the flak it gets, continues to putter along in first place.

Then there’s this, just because:

The worst aspect of social media is that . . . it wrecks your sleep. It’s pretty astonishing that so many people recognize this, but go on being addicted to social media anyway. It’s no wonder so many people complain about sleep these days.

The other thing I find interesting is that, apparently, all of the good and bad averages out almost perfectly to zero. This doesn’t necessarily mean that social media actually has a null effect on your health, since some of these things might count more than others. Still, it’s intriguing to think that the net impact of this enormous industry might be precisely nothing.

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And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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