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Clicks, Cash & Consequences: The Cost of social media fame

I once read, "If you’re getting a free product, then you are the product." That line stuck with me.

by Rashmi Rekha Das

Facebook launched its Creator Program in November 2017 with the goal of competing with platforms like YouTube and Twitch by supporting video creators with tools, insights, and monetization options. Through this program, creators can earn money based on their content’s engagement, with payments deposited directly into their accounts.

To get started, a creator must either create a Facebook Page or switch their profile to professional mode. Success hinges on consistency, quality content, audience interaction, and effective use of Facebook’s tools. Facebook issues weekly challenges, and creators must complete them to qualify for rewards.

Popular Content Types

Video content dominates the platform. Among the most popular formats are live streams, 30- to 60-second videos, and user-generated clips, which attract the most attention globally. Other content types include polls, static posts, and text-based updates, though they generally see less engagement.

Videos with eye-catching visuals or graphics tend to perform well. Controversial or emotionally charged content also drives traffic and comments. Posts that ask questions or encourage interactions—likes, shares, and comments—often go viral.

The Pros and Cons for Creators and Consumers

I once read, “If you’re getting a free product, then you are the product.” That line stuck with me. Is this still true today? Every time we scroll through social media, we’re bombarded with content—it feels like it’s raining videos.

Every coin has two sides. On the plus side, the Creator Program gives users a way to showcase their skills while earning money. Live videos and interactive content let creators build deeper, more personal connections with their audience.

But here’s the twist: Not every creator gets paid. To qualify, they must meet specific performance goals and complete challenging tasks. In trying to meet those targets, many creators start posting low-quality or even harmful content just to stay relevant or boost engagement.

Some resort to sharing overly personal moments, including private family matters. It’s not uncommon to see people uploading emotional videos about deceased relatives or revealing too much about their daily lives. Nudity, violence, and clickbait have also become common. The pressure to perform can lead to poor decisions and exploitative behavior. Some content creators overshare personal details, including sensitive family matters, for engagement. Emotional videos about deceased relatives, personal disputes, and even nudity, violence, and clickbait have become commonplace. Many content creators have also faced excessive trolling, which can negatively impact their mental health.

Extreme Incidents for Engagement

Here are some incidents where Facebook users went to extremes to gain engagement:

1. Fatal Stunt on Purvanchal Expressway

In October 2022, a tragic accident occurred on the Purvanchal Expressway in India. Occupants of a BMW sedan livestreamed themselves speeding at more than 200 km/h on Facebook. Moments later, the vehicle crashed, killing all four passengers. The incident highlighted the dangers of reckless driving behaviors promoted on social media platforms.

2. Photographer’s Murder Livestreamed

In Sanford, Florida, photographer Lauren Ashley Martin was allegedly shot and killed by Savon Chantay Tyler following a dispute over photographs. Tyler’s girlfriend, Lakevia Davonna Pringle, reportedly livestreamed the aftermath on social media. Both suspects faced serious charges, underscoring the misuse of social media to broadcast violent acts.

3. Dangerous Bridge Jumping Stunt

A group of individuals recorded themselves jumping from the 30-meter-high Dickabram Bridge into the Mary River in Queensland, Australia. The video, posted on Facebook, garnered significant attention. Authorities warned that such dangerous stunts could lead to severe injuries or fatalities and indicated potential legal consequences for those involved.

The Privacy Risk: Data Breaches

Data breaches can expose sensitive personal information, including names, email addresses, locations, and even financial details. In 2019, data from more than 530 million Facebook users—including phone numbers and other private information—was leaked online. The breach did not result from hacking but from scraping public profiles.

In another case, a third-party app accessed users’ photos, including unpublished ones. The real danger isn’t just data collection but its potential misuse, whether through leaks, sales, or unauthorized access. Social media platforms like Facebook have blurred the line between creator and consumer, offering monetization opportunities while also pressuring users to trade privacy for engagement. Consumers must stay mindful of what they watch and share, and creators should carefully consider the cost of exposing their personal lives for clicks and revenue.

Brain Rotting and Its Impact on Mental Health

Excessive social media use is often linked to cognitive decline, commonly referred to as “brain rotting.” It promotes passive consumption, shortens attention spans, and weakens problem-solving abilities. Additionally, it contributes to anxiety and depression due to constant comparisons, cyberbullying, and dopamine-driven addiction. The endless scrolling encouraged by these platforms disrupts sleep, fuels FOMO (fear of missing out), and leaves users feeling unfulfilled.

Short-form content conditions the brain for instant gratification, making deep focus and sustained attention more difficult. However, social media also has positive aspects—it raises mental health awareness, provides support networks, offers educational content, and fosters creativity.

To counteract its negative effects, users can set screen time limits, curate positive content, take regular social media detoxes, engage in offline activities, and practice mindful usage. Striking a healthy balance between the digital and real world is key to preventing cognitive decline while still benefiting from social media’s advantages.

After all, when something is free, the real cost might be hidden in plain sight.

About the Author: Rashmi Rekha Das is a digital marketer with extensive experience in startups based in Bangalore. Passionate about digital trends, she writes to create awareness about the effects of social media and online monetization.

Hands Off! mass moblizations this Saturday in Central Illinois

CHAMPAIGN – Hands Off! is organizing a national day of action on April 5 across the country. Local rallies will occur in Charleston, Bloomington, Springfield, and Peoria, in addition to the main protest in Washington, D.C.

Champaign-Urbana's protest will be at West Side Park on Saturday from noon until 2 p.m. Last week, despite persistent rain, more than 300 demonstrators gathered at the Champaign County Courthouse to protest the policies and actions of President Donald Trump's second administration.

Partnering with the AFL-CIO, the ACLU, Patriotic Millionaires, the National Education Association, and more than two dozen organizations, the objective is for people across the country to take action. They hope thousands of people will march, rally, disrupt, and demand an end to this billionaire power grab.

"We’ll show up at state capitals, federal buildings, congressional offices, and city centers—anywhere we can make sure they hear us," it says on the organization's website.

They believe America is undergoing a hostile takeover by billionaires with policies affecting voting rights, the Social Security system, and the gutting of laws protecting against predatory financial practices in consumer banking.

"We are facing a national crisis. Our democracy, our livelihoods, and our rights are all on the line as Trump and Musk execute their illegal takeover."

Interesting articles:

Illinois governor moves to slash cover crop funds despite rising demand

by Jennifer Bamberg
Investigate Midwest

When Steve Stierwalt studied agriculture at the University of Illinois in the 1970s, soil health wasn’t commonly taught or discussed. Faculty often told their young farming students to put all their faith in commercial fertilizers.

But over his 40 years as a corn and soybean farmer in Champaign County, Stierwalt said soil erosion, which can cause fertilizer and manure runoff to end up in nearby rivers and streams, has become an increasingly serious problem.

“When we plowed, we plowed pretty much everything,” except for a row near the fence line, Stierwalt said. “The grass near the fence row kept getting taller, it seemed to me. I came to understand that it wasn’t the fence row getting taller, it was the soil in the fields that was getting shorter.”

In the early 2010s, Stierwalt started experimenting with cover crops, which can help hold soil in place and reduce runoff pollution.

“This valuable resource that we take for granted, we were letting it get away,” Stierwalt said. “We have some of the best soil in the world here, and we have to protect it.”

Six years ago, Illinois became the second state in the nation to offer subsidies to farmers for planting cover crops in the fall, an effort to reverse its status as one of the worst states for agriculture runoff. Demand for the Fall Cover for Spring Savings program — which offers a $5 per acre discount on the following year’s crop insurance premiums — has outpaced state funding every year since.

However, despite the program’s popularity and calls from environmentalists and farmers for its funding to increase, Gov. JB Pritzker has proposed a 31% funding cut.

Pritzker, a Democrat, recently proposed an overall $2 billion increase to next year’s state budget. But he also recommended cuts to several programs, including reducing the cover crop insurance credit budget from $960,000 to $660,000.

Pritzker’s office did not respond to a request for comment but the governor referenced program cuts in a recent address.

Kristopher Reynolds, Midwest Director for American Farmland Trust and a fifth generation farmer in Nokomis, is pictured at the Illinois State Capitol on March 12, 2025. He works with farmers and landowners on conservation cropping practices to meet the goals of Illinois’ Nutrient Loss Reduction Strategy.

“I have made difficult decisions — including to programs I have championed, which is hard for me,” Pritzker said during his State of the State and budget address in February.

Two state lawmakers introduced bills this legislative session to increase the program’s annual funding to $6.1 million. They say it's crucial to support the practice, which will benefit communities in Illinois and beyond.

It's an investment because you know you're doing right by the environment. You know you're doing right by your land, and long term, you're going to build your soil health, and that will impact your bottom line.

Ed Dubrick
small pasture poultry farmer
Cissna Park Illinois

The bills did not clear a recent committee deadline. However, lawmakers can still negotiate funding for the program as they continue to work to pass a budget by the end of May.

Illinois is one of the leading states for farm fertilizer runoff and one of the top contributors to the Gulf of Mexico’s dead zone, a barren area of around 4,500 square miles of coastal waters deadly to fish, shrimp and other marine life. It costs the region’s fishing and tourism industry millions annually.

Runoff from Illinois farms has only worsened, according to a 2023 state study. Between 2017 and 2021, average nitrate-nitrogen loads increased by 4.8%, and total phosphorus loads increased by 35%, compared to the 1980-1996 baseline.

Nutrient levels were highest between 2016 and 2020 before declining slightly. The improvement was attributed to regulatory permits on wastewater treatment plants, which also pollute waterways.

However, nitrate levels remain well above the state’s reduction goals.

Less than 6% of Illinois farmland uses cover crops

The soil in Illinois is famously fertile and much of the land is flat. The soil isn’t highly erodible like soil on a slope or a hill might be. But when fields are left bare after harvest, the soil can easily blow away in the wind or wash away in storms, depositing fertilizers and chemicals into waterways.

Cover crops, which include winter wheat, crimson clover, cereal rye, oats or radish, are planted after harvest and before winter. The crops can reduce soil erosion, break up compacted soil, provide a habitat for beneficial insects and wildlife, and prevent latent fertilizer from leaching into rivers and streams.

Since the Fall Cover for Spring Savings program began in 2019, the Illinois Department of Agriculture has received more applications than the program can fund.

This year, the program sold out in two hours.

Under current funding levels, only 200,000 acres are available, which advocates say is too small.

“At the rate conservation is being invested in right now for agriculture, it would take 200 years to hit the goals under the Nutrient Reduction Strategy. And that’s assuming … there would be new adopters,” said Eliot Clay, executive director of the statewide Association of Soil and Water Conservation District.

The Nutrient Loss Reduction Strategy (NLRS) is a statewide, multi-agency effort to reduce the amount of nutrients in Illinois waterways and the Gulf of Mexico. The policy working group’s latest report, produced in 2023, found that to meet just half of its goals of reducing runoff, nearly all of Illinois’ corn and soybean farmers would need to adopt cover crops.

“It doesn’t mean the state won’t meet the goal,” a spokesperson for the NLRS team at University of Illinois Extension said in an emailed statement to Investigate Midwest. “There is quite a bit of variability of riverine nutrient loads at watershed scales for nitrogen and phosphorus.”

However, the spokesperson added that more research, data acquisition, and planning are needed at watershed scales.

Out of the state’s 26.3 million acres of farmland, an estimated 3% to 6% grew cover crops in 2022, according to USDA data.

Kristopher Reynolds, Midwest director for American Farmland Trust and a fifth-generation farmer in Nokomis, said Illinois needs to see cover crop adoption of at least 15% and more state and federal incentives are needed.

The Gulf Hypoxia Task Force, a federally funded program through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, has provided additional funding to supplement the cover crop program. However, the Trump administration’s freeze of some federal grants might put those funds at risk.

Earlier this year, the Illinois Department of Agriculture was awarded a $25 million grant from the EPA to support conservation practices for the next three years.

“We don't know the status (of the grant),” said Jerry Costello II, director of the Illinois Department of Agriculture, while speaking to the House Appropriations Committee on March 12. “Last that we've heard, things looked good. But that's been a while."

“We've got two and a half months left in this process in Illinois, right?” added Costello, citing the time the state has to finalize its 2026 budget, which begins in July 2025. “Two and a half months plus or minus. So surely we'll have some guidance … we certainly hope so.”

Because of the sheer scale of the agriculture industry, government regulations requiring conservation practices can be difficult to carry out, said Clay, the executive director of the Soil and Water Conservation District.

Farmland covers 75% of the entire state of Illinois, and even if all farmers employed precision sensors to track runoff points, it would cost billions, Clay said.

There would also need to be an army of workers to track and enforce regulations.

However, “industry self-regulating usually doesn't work, and it hasn't worked in ag, because that's basically what they've been doing for the most part,” Clay said. What’s needed, he added, is more public-private partnerships.

Stierwalt, the farmer in Champaign County, helped develop STAR, or Saving Tomorrow’s Agricultural Resources, which gives farmers a five-star score based on their conservation practices.

The state adopted the framework in 2023 to support the state's nutrient loss reduction goals.

Stierwalt said the ultimate goal is to get companies to purchase agricultural commodities based on the rating system.

If the public and industries that rely on agricultural goods for ethanol or food products want sustainably raised crops, then the farmers will grow them, he said.

Cover crop barriers include both cost and culture

Cover crops have long-term benefits but can be expensive and require extra work. Crop yields may even decrease during the first few years.

Cover crops cost roughly $35 to $40 an acre, and farmers don’t make a direct profit from it. The crops are planted in the fall and aren’t harvested. Instead, as the plants die and decompose, they provide nutrients back into the soil for the new commodity crop. Some farmers terminate the crops with chemical herbicides.

But the $5 an acre from the Fall Cover for Spring Savings program acts as an incentive for doing the right thing, which will pay off later, said Ed Dubrick, a small pasture poultry farmer in Cissna Park who also farms vegetables with his wife.

“It's an investment because you know you're doing right by the environment,” Dubrick said. “You know you're doing right by your land, and long term, you're going to build your soil health, and that will impact your bottom line.”

There are also cultural barriers to planting cover crops. Row crop farmers often pride themselves on tidy, neat rows, and cover cropping and no-till can leave fields looking messy.

Walter Lynn, a retired certified public accountant and farmer in Springfield, said farmers sometimes only cover crop fields that are out of sight from their neighbors or the road because they’re afraid they’ll be judged.

At a recent soil health conference in Omaha, Lynn said he met a farmer who believes he can’t openly discuss his practices with his equipment dealer, saying, “There's a vulnerability that ag doesn't deal well with.” But at the conference, Lynn said the farmer found a welcoming atmosphere: “It's so good to come to this space at this meeting … I feel like I'm a member of the cover crop witness protection.”

This article first appeared on Investigate Midwest and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.