Do you know what we are doing 145 minutes every day?

Worldwide, the average person is on their phone for 145 minutes every day! With 1440 minutes in a day, 145 minutes is just over 10% of the total amount of time in a day spent on a phone. Assuming 8 hours of sleep, that increases to 15% of time spent awake, just on a phone.

Do you know why?

In a report published on healthline.com, a hit of dopamine is released each time an interaction such as a like or a comment is added to a users post. When the brain releases that hit, the user automatically feel better about themselves and their social engagement. It keeps them coming back for more. That dopamine release is likely a primary reason for the year-over-year increase to 145 minutes.

That’s only half of it!

From our Securing Your Membership article we talked about the reduction in the time youth spend per week on physical activity, and an increase in time spent on screens. The New York Times published an article in 2005 about the shortened lifespan of youth -- as much as five years. This means that for the first time in 200 years, a child’s lifetime is projected to be shorter than that of their parents because of diabetes, heart disease, kidney failure, and cancer.

How do you Grow?

With the knowledge that parents are now living longer lives than their children, growing is the only thing to do! And physical activity is a great way to combat most leading causes listed above. Be that social influencer for good, be that social influencer that encourages everyone to get active.

Spending approximately 15% of the day on a phone is a staggering statistic, that information is crucial when looking at advertising and marketing. Word of mouth and print advertisements, no longer have the effective reach that they previously did. The curation of digital content is going to be critical to keep up with the demands of fast flicking fingers.

Most important is a centralized repository of digital content that can be accessed by all of your media partners/content creators. Images from your organization have a personal touch that is going to perk the previously discussed dopamine rush -- especially in teenagers -- so having access to reusable digital content for social media is a must.

Next, a strong partnership with generators and publishers is important. With a centralized storage system, generators and publishers no longer have to be the same person. Expanding your social media team allows you to continuously publish relevant branded content with consistent themes ensuring you stay relevant.

Where to Go from Here?

Organizations engaged with youth will have to contend with privacy concerns over the publication of participants. Make sure that your participants sign a release upon registration permitting you to use their likeness in advertising and promotion. In addition, requesting direct permission from parents before publishing an image of their child improves an outsider's view of the organization.

Dumping digital images in a public location, or storing them in an online account with a shared password decreases the security of the stored digital imaging. Look for a solution that has permissions that can be granted to individual users and removed when needed. Your online solution should also have a strong backup system to ensure the images cannot be lost.

Content generators can come in many forms. Organizations that have internal volunteers with this as their profession are incredibly lucky. For the rest, look to your membership for extra one-off volunteers that can help at specific events. It is surprising how long content generated at a single event can be reused, making its life much longer than expected.

Moving beyond your membership, look to the community at that volunteer price point. One suggestion would be connecting with a local high school AV club. Many sports provide unique challenges in capturing quality digital imaging. An AV geek with a new piece of tech may be more than willing to take on a digital content capture challenge.

At some points, it may be necessary to move beyond volunteers. Quality digital content generation can be expensive, especially if you are looking for video or quick action shots at a distance. While local TV production can produce amazing content, they may be contractually unable to cover your private events. Look for smaller up-and-coming production companies or those that specialize in smaller productions for TV or social media. It is surprising how many local self-publishing local resources are available to you.

Once content has been generated, it needs to be published. Meet with your social team to ensure the published documents remain consistent and stay on point with your branding guidelines. Make sure that the content is published to all relevant social media platforms at similar times. Some platforms have better open rates at different times of the day, make sure to hit those key times.

Review your open rates on everything you post to ensure that you are publishing relevant content to your members. Target times they are most likely to open them, and when you can have in-person conversations with them to make sure they saw it on their feed.

In conclusion

Physical exercise is a key way to combat the top diseases that are decreasing the life expectancy of today’s youth. The ever-increasing amount of daily screen time is the key cause for alternate activities -- like physical exercise -- are on the decline. Use that screen time to promote your organization's themes of healthy lifestyles with sport and exercise.

Stay fired up about this. Continue to produce consistently branded content regularly that speaks to your members. Encourage everyone to put up the phone and get engaged in physical exercise.

Statista - Daily time spent on social networking by internet users worldwide from 2012 to 2020 - November 25, 2021 - https://www.statista.com/statistics/433871/daily-social-media-usage-worldwide/

Healthline - How to Tell If You Could Be Addicted to Your Phone - November 25, 2021 - https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/cell-phone-addiction#about-phone-addiction

The New York Times - Children’s Life Expectancy Being Cut by Obesity - March 17, 2005 - https://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/17/health/childrens-life-expectancy-being-cut-short-by-obesity.html