Note: When referencing EA, the article is mainly referencing the Centre for Effective Altruism and organizations adjacent to it.
Introduction
Although the EA movement has built a strong community filled with passionate people and great research, it seems as if there is room for improvement regarding outreach initiatives towards younger generations. Specifically, EA's social media initiatives are lacking, and leaves much to be desired in terms of growth and content. This post will analyze the importance of social media, how/where EA can improve, and additional benefits of increased social media.
YouTube, Instagram, & More
Social media usage is at an all time high, with 4.8 billion people currently using some form of social media. In the age of the internet, it is of no surprise that many of these users are young adults, especially in the United States, where 84% of adults ages 18 to 29 report using these platforms with decent consistency. Within this statistic, the most commonly used social media for young adults was YouTube and Instagram; in which 95% of young adults reported using YouTube, and 71% reported using Instagram. The majority of this demographic also reports daily engagement, with 73% of Instagram users and 54% of YouTube users claiming to use the app at least once a day.
As for the even younger age bracket (13 - 17), YouTube is most commonly used by 95% of teens. Next in line is TikTok, used by 67% of teens. Social media engagement is strikingly high in this demographic, with 35% of teens saying they are using at least one "top 5" platform (YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat or Facebook) almost constantly.
The visual nature of these platforms is of little surprise, with data supporting that visual content increases engagement and possibly information retention. This proclivity towards visual stimuli holds true even for text-based platforms such as Twitter, where 97% of people on the platform focus on visuals.
The importance of courting Gen Z and Millennials through their preferred platforms cannot be understated, especially taking into consideration that these generations have become increasingly politically proactive. The 2022 midterm elections showcased this, where Gen Z and Millennials had the second highest youth voter turnout in the past three decades. As older generations fade, the political power of Millennials and Gen Z will continue to grow, meaning that future decisions regarding policy and legislation will be in their hands. These decisions will undoubtedly be influenced by the news they consume, which is primarily through social media.
With this in mind, if EA wants to maximize its influence on the future and effectively recruit more people to its cause, it must dedicate more of its resources to social media outreach, emphasizing visual content.
How EA Can Improve
For the purpose of this analysis, I have provided a table listing the social media following for Centre for Effective Altruism and the 80,000 hours project.
| Centre for Effective Altruism | 80,000 Hours | |
| 23.1K | 26.1K | |
| YouTube | 9.15K | 9.9K |
| 5.7K | 32K | |
| N/A (doesn't have one) | 5,081 | |
| TikTok | N/A (doesn't have one) | 223 |
Despite the decent numbers of both groups, engagement for at least the past year has been low throughout all platforms. For example, Centre for Effective Altruism's twitter struggles to break 15 likes per post while 80,000 hours twitter struggles to break 50 likes. Recent YouTube videos for both accounts get less than 1,000 views, and the vast majority of Facebook posts have under 20 impressions. Frankly speaking, anyone who "knows" social media would falsely assume we bought our following.
On the bright side, the right type of content can easily rectify this discrepancy, and expand our outreach to new heights. With this in mind here are some suggestions for improvement per platform:
Posting regularly will incentivize the algorithm to push more tweets to EA's current following. It's important to have a mix of original content, as well as quote tweets and replies. Quote tweets and replies should be done in reference to a popular tweet or big account, when done properly, tagging big accounts increases the chance of being retweeted by them, which results in increased visibility.
YouTube
YouTube shorts have helped rapidly increase the following of many creators. YouTube shorts should be....short! Ideally they would be a snippet with a brief explanation of a more complex subject. This viewership can then be translated to other longer form content/videos. Overall, there's a lot of room for improvement when it comes to longer form content on the YouTube channel. EA deep dives into complex subjects all the time and a Kurzgesat approach (and maybe even collaboration) or video essay approach could result in great, shareable, easily understandable content. We can even pull articles from the forums or newsletters to base the videos on.
Instagram is fairly easy, heavily favoring consistency. Uploading 3 times a week using trending audios will help expand growth in no time. Although the "influencer" nature of the platform makes substantive content more difficult, at the very least it can be used as an introductory tool. Short reels showing "cool" events or even work life in a relatable way gets people invested. Instagram is also an easy way to get college students involved in the cause. For example, we can have campaigns promoting EA college clubs to make content that would then be posted and tagged on to our main platforms. This way we encourage EA college students to get more invested through content creation, and involve them with how to shape our messaging towards other young adults.
TikTok
The algorithm in TikTok is great, and there is definitely a market for explaining studies, news, and all sorts of topics in fun short ways. The investment company, Fidelity, does a great job at creating this type of content in the platform. Another fairly popular favorite of mine is Nikita who uses "girlie" language to break down a variety of subjects.
Other Content Notes:
I strongly suggest that the 80,000 hours podcast uploads video in addition to audio. You can easily produce Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube shorts content using that visual content. Plenty of online podcasts have grown by simply clipping and uploading segments of longer form podcasts or live-streams. Take braintrotpolitics for example, who has gotten fairly popular by clipping impactful moments from debates.
Additional Benefits of Social Media
I would like to end this post by highlighting the other benefits found via expanding our focus on social media. For example, the use of social media goes beyond increasing visibility/awareness. When properly utilized, the analytics and metrics obtained by social media will allow us to gain insights into the preferences and behaviors of our target market. This data will help us refine our strategies and better tailor our content to effectively resonate with their interests and concerns. It not only increases our visibility, but gives us the necessary tools to better serve the EA community. In short, these metrics will allow us to build an even stronger foundation, with more effective and improved communication.
Finally, social media is a powerful tool that can quickly raise funds and awareness for certain causes. Through the collaboration of content creators and streamers, we open the possibility of a new donation line. For example, in just three days twitch streamer Hassan Piker was able to raise more than $1 million dollars in charity. Likewise, other sizeable sums of money have been raised streaming, the largest one by streamers Zerator and Dach which broke the world record for most money raised. Across three days of streaming, the content creators raised about $11.5 million for Action Against Hunger.
Conclusion
It is of great importance that EA expands its outreach initiatives to visual content on social media if it wishes to withstand the test of time. Effective altruism is a powerful force for good, and by effectively utilizing social media, we can bring its transformative potential to the forefront of young minds. Let's work together to create an online presence that not only educates and informs but also inspires the next generation to embrace the values of compassion, rationality, and evidence-based action.
Thanks for this. I agree that we’ve been neglecting social media; the main reason for this as far as I can tell is that no one at CEA was primarily focused on comms/marketing until I was hired in September; then other events proved to be attention-stealing.
Social media is going to be a major part of the communications strategy I outlined here; I expect you'll see us being more active in the coming months. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/mFGZtPKTjqrfeHHsH/how-cea-s-communications-team-is-thinking-about-ea
Thank you so much for the response! I look forward to seeing the upcoming changes. There’s so many potential opportunities and avenues of growth, it’s exciting to think about!
I'm sympathetic to this, but so people don't think this will be trivial, note the 80k Podcast did produce some video episodes, and 60 extracts that went out on YouTube and Twitter and I think some other places. They got only a middling level of engagement and it didn't go up much over time.
Some nearby podcasts have made video episodes and had a lot of success (e.g .The Lunar Society), while others it doesn't seem like it has become a major way people consume the content (e.g. FLI, EconTalk).
So whether this is a high priority seems to depend on whether you can succeed at the content marketing aspect.
Thank you for informing me on the video episodes! Personally, I definitely think EA can successfully market these videos by properly editing and taking a clip approach. If others have done it with great results, I think we have the potential to succeed via this route as well!
Love it good points! I'm also surprised there isn't really an EA presence on social media - apart from the twitter storms which may or may not be net positive. Rationalist animations is the closest I can think of for positive content on the internet which has some serious reach.
Nick - it has been fascinating to see how common and passionate the arguments around AI X risk have become on Twitter these days. It does seem to be a major platform for influencing public opinion -- or at least the views of journalists, academics, AI researchers, policy wonks, regulators, politicians, etc.
Thanks for writing this! I agree that we should be doing more social media; as Shakeel mentioned, this is a major part of our comms strategy.
In case you haven't seen it: a few of us did an experiment on TikTok last year. I think it was nice, but seemed unlikely to be the best use of my time, and haven't pursued it much.
Andie - thanks for an excellent, well-researched, and persuasive post. I agree with all your suggestions.
I suspect that there are a few reasons for EA not being savvier or more effective about outreach on the social platforms favored by Gen Z (e.g. YouTube, Instagram, TikTok).
First, I think there may be a view among many EA leaders that 'serious ideas' are conveyed through written text (e.g. EA Forum & LessWrong posts; peer-reviewed academic publications, books), or podcast interviews (eg. 80k Hours), or maybe sometimes Twitter. There's often a disdain (which I admittedly share) for the video-heavy 'influencer' culture of YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. But, I think you're right that these platforms are where the young people are, and we might as well reach them there. This doesn't require us to adopt the more superficial, eye-candy, status-seeking narcissism of many Instagram influencers. We can use these platforms however we want, and build the audience we want to attract. All of the key ideas in EA could be conveyed effectively through 'video shorts' of the kind that are extremely popular on social media at the moment. We just need good 'spokespeople' who are comfortable and skilled at communicating through this medium.
Second, I think there's an assumption among some older EAs (also admittedly including me) that only stupid and superficial people spend huge amounts of time on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok -- and that EA doesn't want to recruit stupid and superficial people. Certainly most of the content on these platforms may seem dumb and vacuous by EA standards. But, as you point out, the vast majority of Gen Z spends a lot of time on these platforms -- and that probably includes plenty of the smartest, most open-minded, and most ethically serious young people. My hunch is that the average IQ of Twitter users might be little higher than that of TikTok users -- but, there are one billion monthly active users on TikTok, and millions of them are plenty smart enough to be good EA recruits.
We should also think more creatively about social media for global outreach. For example, TikTok is banned in India, since it's seen as a platform for Chinese influence and propaganda; but Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter are quite popular in India (and many educated people in India are English-fluent). Whereas in China, the most popular social media apps are WeChat, Sina Weibo, Youku, and Douban, and the working language is Mandarin, with very little English-language content.
One additional comment about ageism and social media to recruit mid-career and older adults: just as Millennials in their 30s may feel some disdain for the short-video social media platforms favored by teens and 20-somethings, they may also feel some disdain for the platforms favored by older professionals, such as Facebook (3 billion users) and LinkedIn (1 billion users). I think it's important to build our EA outreach efforts to people over 40, not just people under 25.
Epistemic status: I'm far more familiar with Twitter (where I have 130k followers) than with other platforms, although I have posted a few videos on my YouTube channel; so, I'm not very familiar with the subcultures on Instagram or TikTok; and my knowledge of social media in other countries (e.g. India, China) is pretty weak.
I believe CEA's general lack of engagement with social media (and with some traditional media) was a deliberate choice of not wanting EA to grow too quickly, and because of concerns about the 'fidelity' of ideas. See e.g. this CEA blog post. There has been some previous discussion of this on the Forum, e.g. here and here.
I don't know if this is still their approach, or will be once they have a new Executive Director in place.