Thanks to the new “Screen Time” feature on the iPhone, Apple users can find out exactly how much time they spend on their phones daily. It breaks it down by app as well, so the user can see exactly where their time is being spent. For me, I spend roughly three hours a day on my phone. According to Screen Time, my apps from the largest time spent to the least time spent are as follows: Messages, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Pinterest.
Although I spent the least amount of time on Pinterest, it has been and will probably be, my favorite social media app of all time. Recently, I’ve been exploring why Pinterest is my favorite social media app even though I spend the least amount of time on it. I’ve finally concluded: Pinterest is my favorite social media app because it motivates its users to go out in the real world and do something.
Pinterest acts as a digital “inspiration board” with posts about anything and everything you can think of. Some of my favorite categories are: travel, DIY, cooking, and quotes. I noticed that I will scroll through Pinterest, find a DIY tutorial that catches my eye, “pin it,” and then come back to it a week later and actually try to do it myself. I’ve created something in my real life based on a “pin” that inspired me online. After around seven years of having Pinterest, I’ve lost count of the number of DIY projects I’ve given out as gifts to friends and family.
Pinterest is beautiful because by giving the app screen time, you are propelled to do something off screen as well. It encourages its users to try something new or go someplace they haven’t before. This social media app is the definition of the old saying, “a picture speaks a thousand words,” because the focus of a “pin” is the image. Not how many likes or comments it has or a snazzy caption, just the art of the image.
In essence, Pinterest is a metric-less social media. Recently, Pinterest got rid of their feature to “heart” a post. This communicated that unless Pinterest is being used as a way to drive traffic for a business or website, users aren’t really keeping track of how popular their content is. All that matters are what interests them and how they can organize these inspiration boards.
One of my favorite features of Pinterest is the ability to create “secret boards.” This means that if I’m gathering inspiration for gift ideas, brainstorming to write a story, or pinning ridiculous amounts of cheesy inspirational quotes, no one but me can see them. By doing this, Pinterest has created a contract with their user. They want their user to feel like they can privately generate ideas. In a world where in some cases, social media rids of any privacy, Pinterest reestablishes that privacy is a valuable commodity.
Pinterest is not just a community of “mom-bloggers.” It is an online community of people that continue to inspire each other.