Surprise COVID Trend: Doomscrolling Moved To Desktop (axios.com) 29
New data from Chartbeat finds that working from home has pushed people to scroll deeper through article pages on desktop, and slightly less through articles on mobile. From a report: The change, which coincides with the start of the pandemic, could suggest that users prefer to engage more with article pages when they have the opportunity to read them on a bigger screen. Several factors could be influencing the trend, says Bonnie Ray, head of data science at Chartbeat, an analytics company. Desktop usage has spiked overall as people spend more time at home. Pre-pandemic article reading habits on mobile may have shifted to desktop. Articles are encountered differently on desktop versus mobile. Ray found the portion of article views from search with no scrolling has gone down significantly over time, but hasn't changed on social. A higher percentage of search traffic versus social occurs on desktop, so "it could be that articles we seek out via search are more relevant to us versus ones served up to us on social," Ray says.
Window heights: Desktop scrolling may have increased more relative to mobile because window heights on desktop have changed very little over the past year, hovering at ~780 pixels, while window heights on mobile have increased from ~580 to 650 pixels. The trend mostly holds true for all but the smallest of websites.
Window heights: Desktop scrolling may have increased more relative to mobile because window heights on desktop have changed very little over the past year, hovering at ~780 pixels, while window heights on mobile have increased from ~580 to 650 pixels. The trend mostly holds true for all but the smallest of websites.
Splitting hairs. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, it could be all that. Or it could be that humans locked down during a pandemic, are just fucking bored.
The stupid simple answer here, is there's a global pandemic going on. Now might not be the most accurate time to be drawing conclusions about human behavior.
At least wait until we're back to "normal" to determine the online habits of the InstaFaceTube Generation sailing the clickbait seas in search of OMGWTF entertainment while snacking on Tide Pods.
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I think that people who setup home offices now have easy access to desktops/laptops in a way that they didn't before.
Maybe it's just me, but I know I now have a laptop setup in a desktop type setting and it's now as convenient as a phone most of the time. Before I had to dedicate computing space to work, my laptop remained folded under the couch except for the rare need and I would faff about on my phone at home.
Doomscrolling? (Score:3)
Is this a new way of say8ing people actually read most of the article?
Is not reading the full article a common thing these days?
I mean, ok, if the writer or subject sucks I can understand stopping before the end, but if something is well written and you've taken the time to search for this, you must want to know about the subject and would read pretty much the whole thing wouldn't you?
Or, is that now considered out of touch?
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I didn't know either, but lo and behold, one simple search reveals:
"Doomscrolling is the act of spending an excessive amount of screen time devoted to the absorption of dystopian news."
- Wikipedia
Why the title equates reading news with devouring dystopia is beyond me.
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> Why the title equates reading news with devouring dystopia is beyond me.
Because reported news is almost equal to dystopia these days. Example from bbc uk, in the news section:
1) Update on a murder trial case
2) India new lockdown
3) Dancer being burnt and abused online
4) Murder trial of a police officer killing some sports athlete
These are the major headlines. In the minor headlines, 5/7 are negative.
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There is an old saying, "If it bleeds, it leads"
As long as people treat the News like entertainment, we will be getting more and more bad news. Because bad news is more entertaining, than good news.
School Board cuts funding in Drivers Education.
Vs.
Schools Art program had won a State Award.
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Another factor that clearly contributes is how we use data to further cement those types of news. Newsdesks are very media savvy, and use their engagement data to adapt the output to "what most people read", and not what is actually happening in the world. "News" aren't as much news anymore, as it is clickbait. Very doom and gloom clickbait.
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Why the title equates reading news with devouring dystopia is beyond me.
The term doomscrolling tends to imply exactly what kind of news sells these days.
Ain't exactly filled with stories of puppies and apple pie recipes.
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Is not reading the full article a common thing these days?
"These days?" On /., it's been an artform for decades.
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Ok, I know I"m getting a bit older these days, but the term "doomscrolling" is new to me.
...
Or, is that now considered out of touch?
So, in the old days, you go to the news site, click on a story, and the scroll bar takes you from the start to the end of the story. Then you go back, and find a new one.
The way the sites work now, when you scroll down, the end of the story is not the end of the "page." The page goes on forever, they just put another story after the end of the first one.
So "doomscrolling" is when you just keep scrolling down, looking for something you need to know about.
It may be that in this new form of web design, the peo
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Good luck finding "something you need to know about" in the news these days.
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It's 5G, all the way down.
Except.. (Score:3)
Except on sites that insist on enforcing mobile-centric layouts on desktop(maintaining a fixed narrow horizontal layout despite desktop's much wider horizontal real estate). I don't want to engage more with those in any format
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I've been saying for years that mobile scum should've been segregated to their own internet since the beginning.
I blame mobile ads (Score:1)
Ads, cookies, notifications... (Score:2)
Personally, I've stopped using my smartphone for web browsing because of these.
Of course I'm Doomscrolling more (Score:3)
It's the only way to beat the cacodaemons!
Another explanation (Score:3)
Desktop: Read article
Mobile: DOWNLOAD: Cunt Wars! Only 5% of people can clear this level! Are you paying too much for car insurance? SPONSORED BY NORD VPN AND SKILLSHARE AND RAID SHADOW LEGENDS
It's the AdBlock, stupid (Score:3)
Blocking ads is much easier on PC than on mobile devices. Who wants to even bother to try to read an article on a smartphone anymore? It's all ads and pop-ups and intrusions and notifications for days. Fuck that noise.
PC, I run sufficient adblocker that I don't see 95% of that crap.
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PC, I run sufficient adblocker that I don't see 95% of that crap.
My VPN blocks ads. I have adbocker installed on my browser. Then I have ublock for those few ads that actually make it through.
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Android + Firefox + uBlock Origin + Privacy Badger = no more ads.
No one willingly reads anything long on a phone. (Score:2)
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Since everyone is stuck home, and using a desktop is such a better experience, might as well use it.
But it's inconvenient to carry my desktop computer into the bathroom.
Harder to drop your desktop into the toilet (Score:4, Insightful)
Since everyone is stuck home, and using a desktop is such a better experience, might as well use it.
But it's inconvenient to carry my desktop computer into the bathroom.
But it's harder to drop your desktop into the toilet.
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safer to read on desktop... (Score:5, Insightful)
On the mobile screen, first the ads take up about half the page (and constantly pop in because it took a bit for the ad to load), and second you run the risk of tapping on an ad, or some link in the paragraph text, when all you wanted to do was scroll up to keep reading. Every spot of the screen is a "new tab" or "new page" land mine waiting to happen.
So in frustration, you store the article away in a reader app like Pocket and view it there where none of that crap can hit you.
On a desktop, there are ways to read and scroll that don't suddenly jolt you out of what you're trying to read.
Tablets are only good for reading if the page lets you read it. Ads on web pages get in the way of that to the point where the one core utility is lost.
Privacy (Score:3)
Although I already know how technically trivial it is to collect this data, I still find it disturbing.
Time to fire up Postman and ruin their dataset.
Boss won't walk up behind them (Score:2)