Quick Links
Ads are everywhere on social media, including in between already-short social media videos and posts. And although I endure adverts in many places, they’re making me use social media platforms less and less.
Social Media Ads Are Getting Insane
We’ve always had adverts in our media, but in the past few years, they’ve ramped up on every platform we have access to. There are ads on the radio, the TV—even streaming services—sent through the mail, and all over our social media channels.
It seems impossible to live a life without encountering ads, with the only way to avoid them being to pay for the privilege. I am tired of targeted ads and constantly feeling like I need to buy things to live my normal regular life—and this is before I even leave the house.
Even the social media accounts I follow out of choice are just becoming human adverts. I have many friends who work as influencers on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok—and I signed up to follow them years ago because we were childhood friends. Now I’m being hounded by ads from my personal channels, too.
There are adverts—usually targeted, as well as general—between the short-form video content that equally rots my brain. It’s sometimes hard to tell what’s an ad, and what’s considered “content”, since everything is trying to sell me something.
Targeted Ads Don’t Engage Me
The idea of targeted adverts scares me and annoys me to no end. I am not a person that parts with money easily—it’s rare that I am “influenced” into buying something from an advert alone. I actively choose to avoid targeted ads because I don’t want to see any ads at all, I’d rather they were as little tailored to my interests as possible.
Ads on social media seem to have the opposite effect of the intention of drawing me in; I’m often compelled to shut the app down entirely, thus seeing no ads at all.
While I’m Used to Ads, Social Media Ads Are Different
I grew up in the 90s—our TV had standard adverts, created for children of my generation—the original targeted ad. Back then, televisions had no pause or rewind buttons, and all ads were on at the same times, so you couldn’t flick to another channel to avoid the ad breaks.
I have clear memories of my siblings and myself using the ad breaks to go get a snack or drink, leaving at least one sibling in front of the TV to shout to the others, making sure we made it back in time before our show started again. I grew up using adverts for efficiency for errands.
Since I was used to the ads at set times, I learned to live with them very well. I could expect them and avoid them in productive ways. It’s not like that with a modern-day ad.
So what makes social media ads different?
I don’t get much true value from using social media, so with the increase in ads, it is only separating me further from wanting to engage. I do not plan my social media use like the way I plan to watch a TV show. I can switch it off whenever.
The only thing drawing me back to social media is the sneaky feeling of FOMO—fear of missing out—that comes from not knowing if something incredibly exciting has happened that I’ve yet to see. Spoiler alert: there’s never anything exciting to find. Just more ads.
For this reason, I also wouldn’t pay money to remove ads. There’s no value in ad-ridden or ad-removed social media for me. I’d be paying to remove ads for a platform whose native content is now considered ads in another form—user-generated content or influencer marketing—so it feels like a lose-lose situation, regardless.
TikTok is adding more productive content to its platform, but with the ads, I don’t want to engage with it anyway. Annoying, repetitive, overly-targeted ads make me decide to shut down—and sometimes, delete—the social media in question.
It’s working as a positive in my life to help me curb my social media use. Ads aren’t drawing me in; they’re pushing me out. I already don’t use platforms like TikTok or Snapchat—which are both adding sneaky ways to increase their ads to the platforms.
So in a way, ads are actually helping me curb my social media usage.
Should You Pay to Avoid Social Media Ads?
I have a coworker who always tries one month or a free trial of a service to see if the premium plan is worth the cost. Social media companies also offer paid plans that can reduce or remove ads on the platform, but not every platform offers this.
In the EU, Meta offers a subscription for no ads. X offers various tiers of X Premium. Reddit offers Reddit Premium. But when trying out these subscriptions, my coworkers have often come to the conclusion that they just aren’t worth the cost when you consider the value they offer. For example,it’s not worth paying Meta to not show you adsbecause they only apply the subscription to one account and it doesn’t fix the underlying quality issues with Instagram and Facebook.
At the end of the day, I wouldn’t use these subscriptions to avoid social media ads. Seamless ads within content-rich platforms don’t bother me. If that’s how the platform wants to make money and I can continue using it free-of-charge, then I’ll let the ads be present and just scroll past them or wait 30 seconds to see or hear more content.
Money is a luxury to me and I cannot afford to use it simply to get of ads. I have needs—and many more wants than no ads—in my life that I can’t justify premium subscriptions to apps that bring me little-to-no true value. Occasionally, ads are even helpful; I’ve discovered many new platforms through on-site ads or video ads on YouTube.
I’d much rather see an advert that shows me something outside of my typical interests and helps me discover something new, rather than playing to the status quo of thinking I need another of the same product I already have and use. If anything, I would pay to have a better variety of ads sent my way, for future discoveries.
I don’t mind ads—but I think they have a time and a place. Social media ads need an overhaul, as I suspect I’m not the only person who would rather shut down the app than sit through countless 30-second, unskippable ads every two minutes.
