It’s Time to Stop Chasing Virality on Social Media
- Nonprofit Learning Lab
- 5 days ago
- 4 min read
This is a guest blog by Carly Schmidt, Owner & Principal at Almanac Marketing LLC.
Can nonprofits build awareness without supporting the attention economy?
In nonprofit communications, social media is among only a few free tools we have to drum up support for our organizations. But, recently, creating content on social media feels more like slapping a nonprofit logo on a pack of cigarettes.
Fifty years ago, the American scholar Herbert A. Simon coined the term “attention economy.” He warned us that, in a world where information is abundant, scarcity becomes a limited and profitable resource. This prophetic insight sheds light on today’s social media landscape, in which every view, click, and unique visit turns human attention into a revenue stream.
Social media as a practice is objectively, scientifically, bad. Your daily scroll on your platform of choice is negatively impacting your sleep and exposing you to involuntary hate-based content. While simultaneously destroying your attention span, scrolling also drives up instant gratification-seeking behavior outside of your scroll. And, perhaps most concerning of all, scrolling is both compulsive and depressing.
Many tech CEOs have admitted that the addictive quality of their platforms is a feature, not a bug. So, when I post to the endless scroll, even for the sake of a good cause, I feel that I am making someone’s life just a little bit worse.
This logic, I admit, is a bit of a stretch. Why would one more video make someone’s life meaningfully worse? When I try to answer this question, I think of sports betting. Sports betting, newly legalized across 38 states, is justified mainly because it supports public services through taxation. But what does that mean for the people whose lives are taken over by addiction? It seems like, as a society, we should have learned to be suspicious of a profit-seeking corporation that says, Yes, we created this harmful thing, but it is your choice (fault) if you use it!
My aunt found TikTok a few years ago and, with it, every wellness grifter on the planet. This makes sense because, alongside good and well-meaning organizations, social media is overflowing with grifters and content farms intent on exploiting every inch of your attention for financial gain. Do we really want the social sector to be in similar company?
And then there’s the incredible hubris of thinking that your videos even make it to your audience’s endless scroll, which brings me to my next question: Am I reaching new supporters by participating in the attention economy? The answer in the new algorithmic landscape is: No. Content farms, with the help of generative AI, are churning out hundreds of pieces of content per day, resulting in a highly competitive landscape. Plus, even if you do break through, viral events do not significantly increase engagement and rarely lead to sustained growth.
It makes sense that you would think that virality is the answer. Americans spend on average 2.5 hours scrolling per day. Naturally, it seems like the right thing to do if you’re looking to get your mission in front of new supporters, but this kind of engagement can only be superficial and short-lived.
Besides, virality is just that—a virus. It is much like capitalism itself, which infects and replicates for the sake of growth at the expense of people and nature. There’s a colonialism metaphor here, too. Tech giants defend their products—and endless expansion—by claiming that they bring resources to communities. Look at mutual aid hubs, who might tell their neighbors where to find resources after a hurricane! But the goal of a mutual aid hub is not virality, it is information-sharing. In fact, when nonprofits post with the express purpose of landing on someone’s For You page, the reverse becomes true. Tech giants exploit your attention to bring resources to themselves.
Your organization is not a profit-seeking automaton. You provide a service to your audience. The fact that you require capital to operate does not require your participation in the capitalist system in the same way that a tech company, which must grow for the sake of its investors, is forced to participate. You have agency. You support people and communities in a way that existed long before capitalism showed up on the scene.
I am not saying that organizations should retreat from this addictive corporate hellscape entirely. What I am suggesting is that you stop contributing—or trying to contribute—to internet noise. Organizations should cultivate a presence on social media that is simple, credible, and scannable. Were someone to stumble upon your page and want to engage, they should know exactly how to do it. Videos are incredible for building trust and credibility and, therefore, inspiring donations, but create these videos for your audience. Be sure that you are speaking to the people who already support you, instead of a general audience that will spend less than 3 seconds with your content. Focus on information-sharing that speaks to your mission and, there, you will find your audience. The attention economy can only provide you with the most superficial support. What you need is trust and connection. Virality is not the answer, community is.
References
1 Office of the Surgeon General. (2023). Social media and youth mental health: The U.S. Surgeon General’s advisory. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
2 Hilman, E. (2024, October 24). This is your brain on social media: How social media use is changing our attention spans [PDF]. ResearchGate.
3 Sangiorgio, E., Di Marco, N., Etta, G., Cinelli, M., Cerqueti, R., & Quattrociocchi, W. (2025, January 3). Evaluating the effect of viral posts on social media engagement. Scientific Reports, 15, Article 639.
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