Information Disengagement: Why Communicators need to Urgently Re-assess

My hand hesitated as I went to press the app icon and hold it down until it wobbled.

Was I really going to delete Facebook from my phone?

Would I survive this disengagement?

My job depends on being informed, and informing others. Why did deleting the Facebook app from my phone feel like an act of professional sabotage? I am choosing to disengage from a whole channel within the context of my phone. I’ll still use Facebook occasionally, but it will be on a desktop environment and almost entirely for work purposes. I’ve finally reached the conclusion that, as an information resource, it’s pretty useless now. There are better uses of my personal time and attention.

It’s not even 24 hours later and I’m still wondering if I’ll cope or cave but, so far, I am holding the line.

Let’s set that unsettling feeling to one side for a moment, however, and explore what’s really going on and why I’ve taken this action.

This is not some sort of wanky digital detox because it’s the New Year. It’s been coming for a while, and is lining up with my word of the year selection in so many ways. What’s behind this action?

I make a living from helping businesses communicate with their potential customers, and targeted audiences. The behaviour of these audiences, therefore, is central to my craft, and I am continually observing, asking questions, and filing that intel away for strategically shifting activity to make the right connections.

There’s a bias, however, that you just can’t escape. Communicators are more likely to be early adopters of new communications channels. We rush towards the new channel, keen to get a handle on how it works and what its potential might be, while other (dare I say, normal?) people lag far behind.

Then we cling to those channels a lot longer than the mass market does. The market moves on to the next watering hole, we’re left propping up the bar like stalwarts moaning that we’ve spent so much time building up our audience. But the audience is no longer there in body, nor in spirit. We’re channel collectors. Obsessive, compulsive channel acquirers. Bluesky, TikTok, X, Truth Social, Facebook, Snapchat. Look at a communicator’s phone apps and you’ll see a plethora of channels. Show your phone to your 75 year old Mum, and they’ll ask over and over again: what’s that app for again? And why do you need that as well? This collectors approach is rarely shared by others. We’re chronically over-informed, over-exposed. And it may give us the false impression that others are just as informed as we are.

We are deluding ourselves.

Festive bin collections, is a prime example of how these delusions can manifest in real life.

As a communicator I’m tuned in. I caught the announcements about the change of pick up days in more than one place. I saw it in the local daily newspaper (yep, I still read one), I saw it on Facebook, I saw it on LinkedIn. I knew the bins were to go out on the Sunday, and not the Friday. But, in our house, I’m not in charge of the bins. We missed the Sunday uplift. Two weeks in a row.

My husband doesn’t read the local paper. He missed the update from the local council on Facebook because the algorithm delayed the messaging. And I forgot to pass the information along, until it was too late. Twice.

Silly us.

Except, out of a street of 10 houses, only THREE of them got the messaging and acted on it in the first week. Just three households put their bin out. Our silliness might be a mishap but 10 houses? This is the general population.

The comms were 30% effective.

Or a 70% failure, if you look at it a different way.

In week two of the festive bin collections, only ONE house put their bins out on the Sunday. One. A 90% failure rate.

Most communicators will point to the obvious: we issued the information via all our channels.

But communication doesn’t take place until it has been received. Sending is not communication. The clue is in the origin of the word: Communis. To form a common ground of understanding. It’s, at a bare minimum, a two person activity. Send, recieve, understand. Sending is just the start.

So was the festive bin collection information really communicated?

I’d argue that it wasn’t.

About 20 years ago, the same festive bin collection information would have been sent out via snail mail. One letter with information about festive collections, plus a printed collection schedule for the year ahead which households would dutifully stick on their pin board. Every household would have the information. The receipt of the message not dependent on an arbitrary decision to read or engage with a social platform. Information disengagement isn’t an issue if you are sending a letter to every household in your region. The householder receives the communication, will almost certainly open it to read it, and then may promptly forget but .

Sending the same information via social media channels is cheaper, but not necessarily as effective.

Oh, but the cost of postage is so high. Local authorities have stretched budgets. I get it. Make do and mend.

But are 70% and 90% failure rates really acceptable levels of communication?

Is this a one-off?

Probably not. The speed of information spread is now deceptively slow. I say deceptively because it looks like it’s faster than ever but digital algorithms have slowed everything down.

My husband is usually a practical litmus test for me on the speed of information dissemination. On average, he picks up on local news stories about 2-3 weeks after the news has broken. Two to three weeks!

It usually makes me smile when he tells me news that I’ve known for a while. What’s more interesting is where he finds out. He finds out on Facebook. From scrolling. But rarely on the same day, it’s many, many days later.

Newspapers are increasingly seen as slow media compared to digital channels, but I am already more informed than my partner because I read yesterday’s news in the paper today. This is a competitive advantage that newspapers are failing to capitalise on. They are still more informative than any social media timeline.

There’s also declining readership in traditional printmedia,. So what does that mean for information spread, and speed thereof?

From where I’m standing, it means communicators, more than ever before, need to revise their game. These free channels are not always getting cut through. Their targeted reach is also highly questionable. It’s great that Auntie Jean who now lives in Canada is following the local council facebook page but that’s one follwer count that will never need the festive bin information – but it counts as reach. How many communicators are taking account of this in their monthly stats update? Moreover these platforms are not delivering messages in a timely manner.

They have dazzled us with numbers but that’s not always translating into impact. If they are choosing when your audience gets to see the information, you are no longer in control of your communications. That’s an unavoidable fact. It’s almost as effective as sending a message via carrier pigeon, except the pigeon would probably be quicker.

Which brings me right back to my Facebook disengagement conundrum. I wrote this article over a period of several days. I wanted to chart how it felt to disengage. The first 24 hours without Facebook on my phone were the most challenging. I had at least 2 moments where I thought I might need it. One to randomly check marketplace for new dining room chairs I didn’t need. The other to check if the local pizza place was closed.

I didn’t need to look on Facebook. In both cases I found another way.

After one day, I stopped thinking about checking Facebook entirely. Three days later the stats show a 35% reduction in “pick ups” – the frequency at which I pick up and check my phone. And I’ve already freed up about an hour a day on average. That’s a massive gain.

Just one week later and I’m spending less than 20 minutes per day on “social” apps. Down from over one hour previously. I’ve just gained almost 5 hours a week.

What have I lost? I’m grasping at saying absolutely nothing at all.

I’m still in contact with everyone I need to be in contact with (maybe more so). I’m still well ahead of my husband on the local news insights. And I’ve not bought anything entirely and utterly random and totally unnecessary for at least five days. My bank balance thanks me.

Is there a point to these ramblings? Yes, there is. As a communicator, I’m a late adopter of channel abandonment. I hang on in there for “professional reasons”. If I am consciously disengaging, chances are the mass market already has. Last year I deleted my personal X/Twitter (the account, not just the app) and never looked back. The world did not end. Facebook felt like a bigger step, but it turned out to be relatively painless. I’ve not closed up shop for good, but I’ve stopped using it. It’s harder to be arsed logging in on a desktop.

For the last decade communicators have had to embrace these channels, because their audiences were using them. Few of us are seriously asking the question: what happens when our audiences are no longer using these platforms? What next.

The overflowing bins on our street signal that disengagement has already begun at pace, and for communicators now is the time to re-assess. Is cheap and easy enough, or are we looking to be effective? They are not the same thing.

There’s more where this came from. I share more of my thinking on Cunningly Good Marketer on Substack. Subscribe to get my opinions, experience and real-world lessons straight to your inbox.