Social Media and the Weather

There’s abundant evidence that social media use—of all types, including platforms like Facebook and TikTok, but also messaging apps like WhatsApp and Signal—ballooned during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in the early 2020s.

Many emergent trends, like video calls and online shopping became commonplace, and that led to a huge swing toward remote work, remote schooling, and even remote dating (and other sorts of relationships).

This surge is perhaps not surprising, as many people were stuck at home a lot more than usual, and thus were looking for connection, entertainment, and in some cases struggling to keep doing their jobs, despite lacking the online infrastructure to do it (so they were keeping in touch with clients and coworkers via these sorts of services).