My hypothesis suggests that social media engagement and macroeconomic conditions are inversely related.
Meaning: as people become more professionally engaged they will naturally engage less with social media.
Yes, this means the boom in Facebook and Twitter activiy etc over the past 4 years was more about people coping with interesting times than anything else.
How can we test my hypothesis?
– U.S. underemployment drops below 18%?
– Other options?
I think it is a bit more tricky because you first have to define “professionally engaged”. There are plenty of people who are so bored or otherwise disconnected from their work that they engage with social networking instead. Therefore I would argue that professionally engaged has a lot more to do with people loving the work, not just working.