I started using Facebook at the age of 13, for many hours every day. The same happened with other social media apps.
I recently found that Facebook alone made around 14K from my daily usage over the years.
I paid with my time and attention, and they made money from it.
Seeing the number made me less addicted and more careful.
It showed me that my time is actually expensive.
I used to be addicted to social media, endlessly scrolling. Now, I consciously control it and dedicate my time to more meaningful activities, like reading, learning new skills, and working on products. Occasionally, I still use social media to relax. For example, last night, I spent an hour on TikTok—it’s been a while since I did that, haha.
Without wishing to doxx you, if we don't know the approximate period in years we cannot tell if this is good or bad profit. If you started when you were 13 in 2004, this means they made significantly less than $1k/year from you, and P/E would be terrible.
If you are 14 in 2026 and should be picking your clothes off the floor and helping dad with the laundry, thats pretty good return on your data, sold to the ad-men. And, it's probably illegal for them to profit off a kid's online time like this.
Anecdotally I am told placement for high net work goods to prospective buyers are significantly more valuable to a website placing ads, than runescape ads. But, there are far less BMW drivers seeing those HNW ads, than kids seeing runescape so it kind-of evens out. That's probably why on the (now rare) times I am in business class long haul jets, I get told I should be using swiss banking, and invest in property in dubai, rather than being told to buy burgers, which frankly is much more likely to happen.
To make $14k off your facebook time, either you paid some FB coin to do mafia wars, or they shopped you to a lot of ad sellers. If you actually bought anything, especially if it was expensive, then everyone (including you) in the deal might be cool with this.
