Tinius Digest May 2022

The pandemic has highlighted the possibilities of hybrid work and changed employees’ mentality and expectations. Jobs that shifted to remote work during the pandemic are unlikely to return to pre-pandemic practices. Instead, people and organizations will develop new hybrid work practices that are fundamentally different. Increased use of hybrid work solutions will significantly impact society as a whole.

The pandemic significantly accelerated the digital transformation already underway at many companies, generating work-related data at an unprecedented pace. Significant advances in artificial intelligence will provide better employee feedback, fewer routine tasks, automation and asynchronous meetings. Future AI assistants will be much more general and could revolutionize the workflows of most employees.

The metaverse will mainly be for training and work. Workers will increasingly access their corporate training via the metaverse. They will benefit from new capabilities within immersive training, such as learning in teams, that will lead to a new wave of workforce skills.

Norway tops the World Press Freedom Index for the sixth year in a row, followed by Denmark (up from 4th place last year) and Sweden (unchanged).

There is an increasing polarization in many democracies due to the ‘Fox News model’—as Reporters Without Borders phrases it—and the spread of disinformation exacerbated by social media.

Reporters Without Borders finds occasional online harassment and threats against media professionals in Nordic countries. There is also a more radical opinion journalism trend developing online in recent years. 

Freedom of the press is described as ‘very bad’ in 28 countries—a record high. The five worst countries for press freedom are North Korea (180), Eritrea (179), Iran (178), China (177) and Turkmenistan (shared 177th place with China). Russia is now in 155th place.

The study finds a positive correlation between video games and children’s cognitive abilities. Children who reported spending more time than the norm (2,5 hours a day) on video games increased their intelligence by 2.5 IQ points more than the average.

There is no difference in the effect for girls and boys who play. The study has also taken into account genetic and socioeconomic variables.

Watching videos (+1.8 IQ ​​points) also had a positive correlation—while no significant effect was observed, positive or negative, on TV-watching or social media.

The study did not differentiate between video game types, is solely dependent on self-reported screen time, and the correlation was weak. But: The study backs up the view that intelligence isn’t a fixed constant and may be influenced by environmental factors. The findings also support the claim that screen time generally doesn’t impair children’s cognitive abilities.

On average, a person in Europe has their online activity and location exposed 376 times every day by the RTB industry. There are significant differences between countries: Norway (340 times) has the highest number among the Nordic countries, followed by Sweden (294), Denmark (280) and Finland (244). The report does not include Iceland.

Europeans and U.S. internet users’ private data is sent to firms across the globe, including Russia and China, without any control mechanisms to prevent storage or surveillance.

The biggest RTB companies include Google and Microsoft. A staggering 1.058 companies in Europe and 4,698 companies in the U.S. receive RTB data from Google.

The report estimates that content from British news publishers is worth between 998 million euros and 1.27 billion euros for Google and Meta each year. News is worth considerably more to Google (€723m-€987m) than Meta (€276m).

In a survey, 70 percent of British respondents reported that they likely would use a different search engine if news was removed from their preferred search engine.

For Facebook, news content is essential for engagement and time spent on the platform. While Facebook is an important distribution channel for many news publishers, examples from Facebook outages have shown that people seek out news content by going directly to news publishers when Facebook is inaccessible.

The growth in the number of podcast listeners in Norway is leveling off. 65 percent of Norwegians state that they have listened to podcasts in 2022—the same number as in 2021. Listeners prefer episodes with a length of between 30 and 44 minutes.

Half of Swedish 16 to 29-year-olds listen to podcasts weekly. The age divide is noteworthy: 70 percent of all listeners to podcasts are younger than 44 years.

Almost 61 percent of businesses now have a social listening system in place and monitor for keyword mentions. 82 percent see social listening as highly valuable and a key planning element.

For the first time ever, the podcast advertising market in the U.S. surpassed 1 billion dollars in 2021. Revenues increased 72 percent YoY to 1.4 billion dollars and are forecasted to exceed 2 billion dollars in 2022 and almost triple by 2024 to over 4 billion dollars.

In 2021, the total daily time spent on media consumption in Sweden increased to an average of 411 minutes—or almost seven hours. This number also includes simultaneous use of media platforms.

Swedes consume 140 minutes of recorded audio daily, including podcasts, radio, and music. The consumption of video and TV was 139 minutes.

83 percent of Swedes use social media on an average day. Social media platforms have greater daily reach than digital and analog radio (76 percent) and print and online newspapers (68 percent).

26 percent of Swedes consume news via Facebook on an averenge day. Among the youngest (9-14 year-olds), Instagram and TikTok were the most important social media platforms for news consumption.

On an average day, 93 percent of Swedes consume TV- or video content. Streaming services reach 58 percent, while traditional linear TV consumption has a daily reach of 57 percent. Worth noting that YouTube has a daily reach of 42 percent.