Your internet use can reveal how wealthy you are

Have you ever wondered what these platforms know about you? The answer can be terrifying.

When you use popular social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, or even search for news or adult websites, you leave a small trace of information. If you add up all of these items, you can form an image of a person.

We use the internet to seek information about all sorts of things, but what you may not know is that the more you use the internet, the more data can be collected and the more algorithms learn about you.

A 2021 study published by The Journal of the Royal Society of Interface, a monthly peer-reviewed scientific publication by The Royal Society, shows that your internet consumption can even reveal your socioeconomic status.

The researchers used the data from 3.7 billion mobile traffic records collected in France by the telecom company Orange.

The study gathered data between May and June 2017 and contrasted it with socioeconomic census data from family homes gathered in 2014-2015.

The study reveals that reading the news, using streaming services such as Netflix or Spotify, responding to e-mails, or chatting over WhatsApp is something more common among people who live in wealthier neighborhoods.

In contrast, using social media platforms such as Facebook or Snapchat, watching YouTube, or looking for adult images or videos online is done far more by people with less financial means.

This doesn’t mean that there aren’t rich people watching YouTube or that poor people don’t use WhatsApp. It’s only that some apps are far more prevalent in certain groups than in others.

However, not all apps reveal as much about their users. The study shows that Instagram and Twitter, for instance, have a very broad appeal that attracts more or less equal numbers of people from all backgrounds. It seems like everyone likes to share their thoughts and their selfies.

Education is a key factor determining which activities people from different economic groups do most often online.

People who have a higher level of education tend to read more news, and people with less education tend to use social media more often.

“The digital usage gap is so profound between low- and high-income or low- or high-education areas that it can be used to clearly distinguish between them or even identify the relative composition of these groups in a given area”, the study states.

However, correlation doesn’t imply causation and another question arises: Do people become wealthy thanks to education or become educated because they can afford it?

The researchers wanted to prove that there was a gap between wealth, education, and internet usage. They feel that they have succeeded. Now they hope these results help to fight inequality.

“We have found a huge gap,” study coauthor and Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher Esteban Moro commented to El País. “Our study makes way for the creation of indicators that allow us to study this gap and its evolution.”

Although the team behind the study published by The Royal Society may have noble intentions, sometimes this information is useful for less altruistic goals.

This is what happened with Cambridge Analytica, a British consulting firm that was using Facebook user data to create political advertisement for their clients.

Harvesting information from up to 87 million Facebook profiles, Cambridge Analytica managed to swing the vote in favor of Brexit and and also influenced the Donald Trump presidential campaign.

The only thing they did? Create tailor-made advertisements aimed at less-educated and less politically-motivated people on social media.

Feeling ignored by mainstream society, this target audience was eager to vote for what they felt spoke to them.

Let's hope data studies like the one published by The Royal Society can help society to improve, instead of dividing it even more.