One of the questions on internet usage asks how old the person was when they first used social media. I have visited the websites of Facebook, Twitter, etc on occasion but I have never signed up or logged in (ie had an account) with any of them. I am unsure if this means I have "used" social media under your definition. If the answer is no, there doesn't seem to be a way to indicate that since one has to input a number greater than 0
> If you notice any problems, please ask yourself “Is this a real objection rather than a nitpick? Is there a single person in the world who will genuinely be confused/upset with this wording?”
Surely you can decide for yourself whether you want to count certain edge cases as social media. FWIW, I would count LiveJournal and Xanga as fairly standard examples, and both are described by wikipedia as social media/networking sites.
I did indeed count Livejournal and did not count Usenet (though possibly just because I didn't think of it), so I'm pleased to see that this is, if not a universal interpretation, at least not an n=1 interpretation.
having read the CTW with Jonathan Haidt I am now enlightened to understand that its the use of an algorithm to direct content towards you that gives social media that extra something that goes beyond information exchange tool.
I wish Tumblr had been on there — it's the only social media I really use regularly, and there are a decent number of Scott-readers (both fans and critics) over there.
I thought about counting Usenet (or BBSes), and LJ, but decided Facebook was the central sort of example. But it was one of the questions I spent too much time dithering over.
I entered "9999" for "age of owning a smartphone", since I've never owned one. I eventually decided I had used social media, especially when I saw that scot was counting youtube and substack.
> How many hours a day do you spend online, other than for work? Count playing online games. Don't count offline games, TV, etc.
This question seems very ambiguous to me. If watching TV doesn't count, does watching Netflix count? Watching YouTube videos? Reading blogs? Wikipedia? Web serials?
I'm guessing the intention here is "digital social interactions"..?
I mostly spend time online reading stuff, not interacting, and definitely counting this as online. Yes agree that Netflix and other streaming platforms is SLIGHTLY ambiguous but I'd count that as TV because it's a functional equivalent of putting a DVD into a player.
Depending on whether you're a lumper or a splitter, YouTube could be either. Most of my YouTube watching is on my TV, so there's no possibility of interaction. So is it still social, or is it another way to watch TV?
Yeah I don't really buy YT as social media because it's defined by interactivity and posting own content to me and I've never interacted or made yt posts (not that I use much YT). That said : fed by an algorithm is another aspect here and this fully applies to YT. TT isn't all that super interactive from what I've heard yet it's pure algorithm.
I counted online reading as online, even though in reality I first mass-save a bunch of stuff to online-read locally, and then read it in a viewer program that doesn't connecto to the network.
Based on how he talked about YouTube as a social media company, I think that would be included. Online videos where ordinary people can upload and other ordinary people can comment seems to be central examples for the survey.
That said, I think watching network news online would not count as "online."
In an urban location. In a rural area, it’s a weird question. I just put 1, since it doesn’t bother me unless a tree falls on the road which is against the spirit of the question
...actually, in retrospect, the intent of these question is unclear to me: am I not bothered by these things because I'm not in an environment where they happen enough to bother me, or because I hypothetically wouldn't be bothered even if I lived in a place where all that stuff happens?
I took it as something like "would your life personally be better if we as a society dedicated resources to fixing this problem"
So if you never encounter it, or if you encounter it but not enough to matter, or if you encounter it a lot but happen not to mind, that would all count as "no"
When I'm birding residential areas, I prefer to walk through the alleys rather than along the streets, since the weeds and untrimmed bushes that one finds in alleys provide better bird habitat than mown lawns and manicured shrubs. Overgrown vacant lots make for even better habitat, so more and better birds.
I have the type of "overgrown/dead plants" at my house that clearly do belong in this list (along with peeling paint) because I'm a lazy slob, but they clearly aren't bothering me.
[Not important] This could be a deliberate design choice, but I don't like the 1-10 rating scale for Left v Right as it does not have a middle. I think best is -5 to 5, more clear / symmetric.
Yeah, this is a common technique in psych to get more accurate answers (otherwise people bunch up exactly at the midpoint).
The issue is that if you put numbers like 1–10, lots of people make an off-by-one error and think 5 is the middle option. I usually prefer verbal labels because of that.
My memory tells me it's exactly the opposite: that people usually don't want to answer the middle point, and including it will create non-normal distributions that restrict the use of some basic statistics? Might differ based on the question obviously.
This is also a problem with long COVID. I had the impression from reading a couple of papers on long COVID that getting out of breath easily or experiencing brain fog for a couple of months then getting better absolutely does count and makes up the majority of cases, and that was the case for me, but it's not clear whether the question is asking about current symptoms or symptoms at the time the respondent had it.
My sense of taste got weird, but after 2-3 years I think I'm over it. This is long covid, but it's not the sort of thing people think about when they hear the phrase.
>>How strictly did your parents limit your Internet use as a young child (eg age 7)?
would it be more productive to have an option called "i did not care at all for internet back then, so my parents didn't even think about it?" or would that fall into the category "there was no internet back then"?
also, the first social media usage question has "youtube (this time it blocks all videos, not just comments)" as a possible answer, instead of just "youtube".
When I was a teenager the internet was very new, so there weren't that many places to go. Internet speeds were so low that the best you could do was individual pictures, slowly loading one at a time. There wasn't nearly as much to protect kids from, though it was still non-zero. There was no Google or other good way to search for that stuff, so it was also harder to find bad things. A few years later porn infiltrated pretty much everything, so that advertisements on otherwise reputable websites might include porn. By then I was an adult, so my parents didn't know or regulate. That was a weird time.
Yeah, at the literal age of 7, my nerd of a dad was actually trying to convince me to use the internet more, but I really didn't want to. It wasn't until a few years later that I found any online content that could hold the attention of a child (it was Homestar Runner)
This question really puts in stark releif how much things have changed
I distinctly remember that sometime around (I think) the very early '00s, I was sent a link by an online acquaintance to some fun web quiz or something like that, and only noticed about twenty minutes later that the site was absolutely loaded with pornographic banner ads. I mentioned it to her and she was like "Oh, I didn't see them either." They were large and prominent, we both just had learned banner ad blindness. I still lived with my parents at the time so it was lucky that I eventually noticed--that sort of thing would have freaked them out.
Yes, it was a very weird time. Perfectly normal banner ads for like, toothpaste or something would cycle through with obvious links to porn sites and sometimes included full nudity. The way ads often worked, it didn't seem to matter much what kind of site you were on. I think the ad space was sold through a company that had no direct relation to the website hosting the banners, and apparently no one was doing quality control to confirm the ads were okay for where they were being used.
How long have you been reading ACX has no option between 1-2 years and since it was SSC! I'm not misremembering that ACX has been around for at least 4 years, am I?
It's really easy to make a mistake in the "annual salary" question if you live in a country where income is usually expressed per-month. Stackoverflow surveys confirmed this, they got unusually weird results from Poland, Czech Republic etc, it turns out this was the reason. I literally thought about the Stackoverflow blog post on this when I saw the question, but then did all the calculations in my head in monthly amounts, converted and still almost made the mistake.
I suggest splitting the question into two, an income question and whether you're expressing as monthly or annually. This would complicate result processing but not by much, you can convert the results back to annual with a simple Excel formula.
I was more confused by "pre-tax". I ignored my payroll-taxes. Also, did not add the child-benefits, "Kindergeld" (ca. 10k/year with 3 kids). Hope that is ok. Similar ballpark.
I think you probably meant child benefits / allowance since you mentioned "Kindergeld", which is money the state pays you because you have a child. Child support is money that a parent usually pays after after a divorce to support the child living with the other parent or someone else (Kindesunterhalt).
In standard US terms, for a salaried or hourly employee, "pre-tax income" means the amount your employer pays you in wages and bonuses (including stock awards and profit sharing, if applicable) before payroll and income taxes are withheld.
Tax credits (government benefits paid through the income tax system) are not counted; e.g. our equivalent of kindergeld is the "child tax credit", where the federal government credits a certain amount of money towards your taxes owed for each child you have, and you get a refund check if this means you withheld more money than you end up owing after tax credits.
Other government payments usually aren't counted, either, unless they're earned income (i.e. wages for current government employees or pensions for retired employees) or monetary benefits intended to support you while you aren't working due to disability, old age, temporary situational unemployment, etc.
Thank you! Thus I failed. ;) In German: 'Brutto' (pre-tax) resp. "netto" (post-t). Usually, statisticians will ask for "brutto", as the netto will vary strongly. Should Scott want to check our income or how it correlates with other stuff, it would make more sense to ask for post-tax, I presume.
Yup, this. Also Europeans just don't think about pre-tax, it's automatically deducted. I just think about how much money gets into my account each month (I get an SMS from the bank with it).
Not fully I guess, because there are a bunch of taxes companies pay directly for employing you (but still go towards your pension, health care etc) that aren't included in your pay package. I have no idea if this situation is the same in the US.
Being in part responsible for frickin' payroll, I wish more of them bloody *did* know it, too many times having to explain to working adults who have been working for years why their pay is different this week (due to how the PAYE system works) and no, they have to get on to Revenue to fix it, I can't do it for them.
It's not simply young people in their first job, there's a lot of older people who have no idea how the tax system works, tax rates, credits, etc.
In the US, there's a payroll or "FICA" (Federal Insurance Contributions Act) tax that is used to fund Social Security (old age and disability pensions) and Medicare (singlish-payer health care coverage for retirees). It's assessed so half is nominally paid by the employee and half nominally paid by the employer. The employee half is counted as part of your take-home income, while the employer half is not.
The FICA rate is 7.65% for each half (15.3% total) on the first $168,800 of payroll income and 1.35% of payroll income above $168,800. If you're self-employed, you pay both halves of the tax (15.3% below the limit and 2.7% above it).
Most people who are salaried or hourly employees never think about the employer side of the payroll tax unless we're economics or public policy nerds because we never see or hear about that money.
So what is the primary negotiation number for a European white collar employee? In the US its this "pre-tax" salary. I am hoping the answer is not something like non one negotiates, its determined by your union.
When you are taking a new job, how does the job offer specify what your wages would be? Do they just tell you pre-tax income (and that's the last time you think about it), or are they able to calculate your take-home income and quote that to you?
In the US, it's always pre-tax income quoted in job offers and annual salary reviews because our tax system is hairy enough that your employer can't know with confidence and precision what your after-tax income would be, as it depends on if you have income from other sources (second job, hobby business, taxable investment income, etc), how many children you have, whether or not you own your home and if so how much you pay in property taxes and mortgage interest, how much you give to charity, whether or not you're married and if so how much income does your spouse have, how much you pay into tax-advantaged retirement savings, etc.
Not true, and generalizing about Europeans is silly in general, since it's like 50 pretty different countries. E.g. Swedes definitely think about pre-tax, but by that they mean post payroll tax but pre income tax, so pre like half the taxes.
This, and also "pre-tax" is a loaded question in more than one way.
Here in Spain, for example, we pay (among quite a few other minor taxes) two main ones on our paycheck:
1) Income tax (IRPF) - This is the run-of-the-mill progressive tax, bracketed, you pay more (in %) if you earn more. Brackets go from 15 to 45%, approx.
2) Social Security (pays for public medical system + public pensions + job loss insurance + lots of minor public services and pensions), which is paid part from your paycheck, but in largest part "by your employer". The total amount is 30%, partition is 6%/24%. Meaning that, if you get, like, 2000€/month, "gross", a surcharge of around 600€ is added. So, your employer is paying 2600€, from which you see your "gross" or "pre-tax" of ~2000€, from which you pay your part of Social Security, income tax and assorted minor taxes, and get your "take-home" pay of ~1600€ (I'm deliberately simplifying it a lot). Thus, my "pre-tax" does not match at all my full salary cost.
Besides, if you are curious, this Social Security is apart, and added, to the regular income tax. So our real tax brackets reach upwards of 50% with ease, and in some cases as high as 75%.
I'd suggest adding a pre-tax and post-tax question, both for consistency reasons and for us financial/fiscal nerds. And clarifying about if taxes are to be only considered "income" taxes.
I think he's talking about the gross income as it shows up on your tax forms. I'm assuming there's a tax form I guess.
It's a *very rough* guess as to how financially prosperous you are. The converter in the link only does currency conversion. There's no PPP, no taxes (income or consumption) included. I didn't check while I was doing it, but someone who's in the position of a traditional housewife could answer 0 income, and it could be completely misleading.
I'm also confused about the correct answer here. My salary? Total income from our 2023 tax return divided by two? (It's sitting right here on my desk!) Total income from 2023 tax return?
This isn't just an ACX issue though, I feel like every dataset that gets into income for households of mixed composition ends up dealing with it in a very unclear fashion.
He’s asking individual questions about personal income. There are some questions that mention family, this isn’t one of them. I don’t find that unclear at all, on this or other surveys. Income is all personal income.
I agree with that. Income is useless without taking into account wealth. A pensioner playing down his wealth will have a low income but potentially a good lifestyle. Here, though, Scott is possible trying to associate what class people think they are with gross earnings.
Yep, agreed on both this and pre-tax problems. Russian salaries, for instance, have a weird situation where there's the official number (let's call it 100%) but the employer actually pays ~129% and the employee receives 87% because 13% count against the salary but the rest are social payments on top.
This is like when I did a little investigation into names. There is no limit on the number of names a person can have at any one time, or over a lifetime, or types of names, or limit to how long each name can be, or the characters in any given name. This is for real world people.
I'm not sure how you ask a question like this in a way where you can figure out a reasonably reliable answer as to how personally prosperous a person is, when the person could be living anywhere in the world.
Even "gross income" is only a vague wave in the direction of prosperity. How much you can actually spend varies a lot.
I am confused by what counts as social media. For facebook/instagram/tiktok/etc I never visit or only when absolutely forced. For twitter there's <5 accounts I occasionally visit, and I've never posted/liked/etc.
But I do watch youtube videos, subscribe, like, maybe comment once per month. Does this count as using social media? Feels like no to me, but "What social media do you use?" seems to think so.
The mental health section isn't very specific on timeframes. I read it as current, major or persistent issues rather than historical ones. But it could be read different ways depending on how much you make mental health a part of your personality.
The US viewpoint doesn't quite fit with UK realities. The Tories are not really conservative any more. Socioeconomic class is based more around culture than money. A US detached house is probably equivalent to a UK terraced one. But yes that perhaps falls into nitpicky.
How happy are you with your paid subscription? I feel frustrated not to be able to say that it enriches my life by informing me of things I had not thought about. It doesn't so much change my views as provide me with things to have views about.
I think the point being made is that equivalent price/value of a US detached house will get you a terraced house in the UK, which is just saying that the UK has terrible quality housing (space per person as well as quality).
Oh. I was assuming the question was just about the physical house. If Scott wants that information, it would be simpler to ask about the value of the house.
Yes I think that is about right. Even if you have a posh job in London (which is where all the posh jobs are) you are still going to be living in a flat or terraced house.
There’s plenty of homes , from large old houses, to even council (or ex council ) houses with gardens in London. Not necessarily affordable but people do live there. I don’t think that New York or Boston are all that different anyway.
How should a PhD student déclare their work status? I'm technically still a student but I don't have any classes, I have a salary and I mainly do research and teach so I feel my experience is closer to academics, although I don't feel confortable calling myself this either
Same. I don't know how to properly answer that question. Is a PhD student and junior researcher at a government research center a job for the government, or a non-profit, or an academy, or a student?
What is the difference of living in a "condo" or an "apartment" (up to 10 units resp. 10+units)? All right, I answered "apt. up to ten". Thus picking nits. But I am confused, honestly. Anyone knows?
Yeah, this threw me too – I live in a co-op in an apartment building with more than 11 units. I chose "condo / duplex / rowhouse / etc.", but I wasn't sure what the intent of the question was, so that might have been wrong.
Appreciate the answers! Seems a single "apartment" is always "rented" - while condos or houses are owned. But as all of those are often let for rent and thus "rented" - we are still confused. Or maybe Scott thinks: 'Condos that are not apartments'. Or: "cheaper, poorer, crowded places" (apartments can be quite large and expensive, though).
Some question are unclear. How do I rate my attractiveness? Should I rate it with respect to my age and sex? Should an average 20 years old girl rate herself more attractive than the same woman at the age of 60?
What is life satisfaction? Over what time horizon? Weeks, monthes, years? Same about many other question. There is no time horizon given, making a question unclear.
What is gender? This concept is so vague that I think I don't have gender identity.
> How old were you when you got your own smartphone?
What should I answer if I never had a smartphone? And what is "my own"? If it was given to my by work, and did not belong to me, does it count?
I'm in the same boat as you re: smartphone; I left the question blank, since that seemed to be the most consistent with the rest of the survey's methodology.
I went with how attractive I am right now in my middle age. Not sure about women, but as a man, I've gotten older, balder, a little fatter, and more gray hair. Aging definitely has an impact, but some people age better than others.
I figured it was most fair to answer the attractiveness question on the scale of all humans of all ages rather than just all male humans in their 40s.
I answered same as you with an absolute scale rather than relative. So now I'm quite curious to know what percentage of survey participants answered it the same way.
>Should an average 20 years old girl rate herself more attractive than the same woman at the age of 60?
I mean, the Oktrends blog and Dataclysm the book would definitely say so, and the 20 year old would get several OOM more messages?
I feel like there's a pretty central interpretation to most of these, and quibbling about the details or edge cases is impractical and just leads to lizardman constants in the answers.
They're social science survey answers, not tablet-carven truths that need to be rigorously provable. Just answer whatever you feel like the right answer is.
For disorders, how should marriage and adoption be counted? I assume it's about genetic relatives, so if my wife or adopted child or step-mom has a condition, I should leave that off?
I didn't think of Substack as a social medium, so I had to go back and revise an earlier answer. Does LiveJournal count? I've been active there since around 2002.
Notes made it much more social, but if all you do is subscribe to people and read the emails without commenting, it really isn’t a social media. Of course, you commented here, exposing yourself to the social media
One of the questions on internet usage asks how old the person was when they first used social media. I have visited the websites of Facebook, Twitter, etc on occasion but I have never signed up or logged in (ie had an account) with any of them. I am unsure if this means I have "used" social media under your definition. If the answer is no, there doesn't seem to be a way to indicate that since one has to input a number greater than 0
If you think of the way you browse them as "using social media", put the age you started browsing in that way. Otherwise leave blank.
I mean what I'm wondering is, like, what about LiveJournal. Or, say, Xanga...
> If you notice any problems, please ask yourself “Is this a real objection rather than a nitpick? Is there a single person in the world who will genuinely be confused/upset with this wording?”
Surely you can decide for yourself whether you want to count certain edge cases as social media. FWIW, I would count LiveJournal and Xanga as fairly standard examples, and both are described by wikipedia as social media/networking sites.
I really wanted to include Usenet in this question but I resisted.
...I didn't resist! Hopefully a certain amount of random noise can be tolerated.
Or bulletin boards
I wouldn't count Usenet, but I would count Livejournal.
I think there's a meaningful distinction between web forums and places where you're expected to make a personal profile and have people follow you.
If Reddit counts, then Usenet ought to.
I did indeed count Livejournal and did not count Usenet (though possibly just because I didn't think of it), so I'm pleased to see that this is, if not a universal interpretation, at least not an n=1 interpretation.
having read the CTW with Jonathan Haidt I am now enlightened to understand that its the use of an algorithm to direct content towards you that gives social media that extra something that goes beyond information exchange tool.
I wish Tumblr had been on there — it's the only social media I really use regularly, and there are a decent number of Scott-readers (both fans and critics) over there.
I thought about counting Usenet (or BBSes), and LJ, but decided Facebook was the central sort of example. But it was one of the questions I spent too much time dithering over.
I also came for this exact question. I spontaneously entered 0, too, so possibly Scott should treat 0 as “I have never used social media”.
I entered "9999" for "age of owning a smartphone", since I've never owned one. I eventually decided I had used social media, especially when I saw that scot was counting youtube and substack.
> How many hours a day do you spend online, other than for work? Count playing online games. Don't count offline games, TV, etc.
This question seems very ambiguous to me. If watching TV doesn't count, does watching Netflix count? Watching YouTube videos? Reading blogs? Wikipedia? Web serials?
I'm guessing the intention here is "digital social interactions"..?
I mostly spend time online reading stuff, not interacting, and definitely counting this as online. Yes agree that Netflix and other streaming platforms is SLIGHTLY ambiguous but I'd count that as TV because it's a functional equivalent of putting a DVD into a player.
Depending on whether you're a lumper or a splitter, YouTube could be either. Most of my YouTube watching is on my TV, so there's no possibility of interaction. So is it still social, or is it another way to watch TV?
Yeah I don't really buy YT as social media because it's defined by interactivity and posting own content to me and I've never interacted or made yt posts (not that I use much YT). That said : fed by an algorithm is another aspect here and this fully applies to YT. TT isn't all that super interactive from what I've heard yet it's pure algorithm.
I counted online reading as online, even though in reality I first mass-save a bunch of stuff to online-read locally, and then read it in a viewer program that doesn't connecto to the network.
Based on how he talked about YouTube as a social media company, I think that would be included. Online videos where ordinary people can upload and other ordinary people can comment seems to be central examples for the survey.
That said, I think watching network news online would not count as "online."
> litter, graffiti, literal broken windows, peeling paint, overgrown/dead plants, etc.
One of these things is not like the others, one of these things doesn't belong
Which one?
The one that doesn't belong is the overgrown plants, right? They can be beautiful.
They are an example of bad maintenance like the rest.
In an urban location. In a rural area, it’s a weird question. I just put 1, since it doesn’t bother me unless a tree falls on the road which is against the spirit of the question
...actually, in retrospect, the intent of these question is unclear to me: am I not bothered by these things because I'm not in an environment where they happen enough to bother me, or because I hypothetically wouldn't be bothered even if I lived in a place where all that stuff happens?
Oh, well, too late, I've answered now :)
I took it as something like "would your life personally be better if we as a society dedicated resources to fixing this problem"
So if you never encounter it, or if you encounter it but not enough to matter, or if you encounter it a lot but happen not to mind, that would all count as "no"
The dead and overgrown plants are in my yard, and my life would be significantly worse if society in general acted like a picky HOA
When I'm birding residential areas, I prefer to walk through the alleys rather than along the streets, since the weeds and untrimmed bushes that one finds in alleys provide better bird habitat than mown lawns and manicured shrubs. Overgrown vacant lots make for even better habitat, so more and better birds.
Literal awards are given to the most beautiful alley-facing garden in my community, as well as awards for sidewalk poetry.
Shovel snow off you walk, uncover a haiku.
If they are beautiful they are not *over*grown, by definition. :-)
(I mean graffiti, for the same reason, and you can similarly claim that if they are beautiful they are street art not graffiti...)
I paused on this one. While I am surrounded by a great deal of all of these things, they don't bother me.
I have the type of "overgrown/dead plants" at my house that clearly do belong in this list (along with peeling paint) because I'm a lazy slob, but they clearly aren't bothering me.
[Not important] This could be a deliberate design choice, but I don't like the 1-10 rating scale for Left v Right as it does not have a middle. I think best is -5 to 5, more clear / symmetric.
For the question "Are you interested in donating a kidney?" I would have liked to answer "Interested, but not in the next 10 years" or something.
Also, I know, only one of mine is really fine. I would donate all when dead, ofc. - In the spirit of the question, I went for: No.
0 to 10 (or 0 to 5 or 0 to 100) are good too. These are easy to convert to each other, unlike 1 to 10, 1 to 5, 1 to 100.
I think he's said before that the scale is on purpose so that people have to pick. Almost everyone leans, even if very little.
Yeah, this is a common technique in psych to get more accurate answers (otherwise people bunch up exactly at the midpoint).
The issue is that if you put numbers like 1–10, lots of people make an off-by-one error and think 5 is the middle option. I usually prefer verbal labels because of that.
My memory tells me it's exactly the opposite: that people usually don't want to answer the middle point, and including it will create non-normal distributions that restrict the use of some basic statistics? Might differ based on the question obviously.
I don't like the scale because it isn't a scale. "Left" and "Right" are extremely similar; the "middle" position isn't between them.
For disorders: More than one option should be possible, since thinking you have a disorder and having a family member with it are not incompatible.
There is also no option for "I had this disorder in the past but no longer do", which would be highly relevant.
Agreed
Seconded
Thirded
This is also a problem with long COVID. I had the impression from reading a couple of papers on long COVID that getting out of breath easily or experiencing brain fog for a couple of months then getting better absolutely does count and makes up the majority of cases, and that was the case for me, but it's not clear whether the question is asking about current symptoms or symptoms at the time the respondent had it.
Fourthed.
Not sure about autism/ schizophrenia, but lots of ex-bulimics out there.
Yeah, I missed that option too.
I had long covid, but it was a weird variant.
My sense of taste got weird, but after 2-3 years I think I'm over it. This is long covid, but it's not the sort of thing people think about when they hear the phrase.
>>How strictly did your parents limit your Internet use as a young child (eg age 7)?
would it be more productive to have an option called "i did not care at all for internet back then, so my parents didn't even think about it?" or would that fall into the category "there was no internet back then"?
also, the first social media usage question has "youtube (this time it blocks all videos, not just comments)" as a possible answer, instead of just "youtube".
For the psych ones, put whatever the strongest option that applies is (eg if you have it and a relative has it, say you have it).
Fixed the YouTube one, thanks.
It looks like when you fixed it, you also inserted a mysterious "Option 9".
I thought option 9 was just a social media I never heard of
I thought it's a deliberate check for the lizardman's constant via inserting a non-existent name.
I googled Option 9, and almost checked it because I thought it would be funny in the context of “I have never used social media”.
Me too lmao
When I was a teenager the internet was very new, so there weren't that many places to go. Internet speeds were so low that the best you could do was individual pictures, slowly loading one at a time. There wasn't nearly as much to protect kids from, though it was still non-zero. There was no Google or other good way to search for that stuff, so it was also harder to find bad things. A few years later porn infiltrated pretty much everything, so that advertisements on otherwise reputable websites might include porn. By then I was an adult, so my parents didn't know or regulate. That was a weird time.
Yeah, at the literal age of 7, my nerd of a dad was actually trying to convince me to use the internet more, but I really didn't want to. It wasn't until a few years later that I found any online content that could hold the attention of a child (it was Homestar Runner)
This question really puts in stark releif how much things have changed
Same. The only website I knew about was Wikipedia, and I was scared of the "Internet Browser".
I distinctly remember that sometime around (I think) the very early '00s, I was sent a link by an online acquaintance to some fun web quiz or something like that, and only noticed about twenty minutes later that the site was absolutely loaded with pornographic banner ads. I mentioned it to her and she was like "Oh, I didn't see them either." They were large and prominent, we both just had learned banner ad blindness. I still lived with my parents at the time so it was lucky that I eventually noticed--that sort of thing would have freaked them out.
Yes, it was a very weird time. Perfectly normal banner ads for like, toothpaste or something would cycle through with obvious links to porn sites and sometimes included full nudity. The way ads often worked, it didn't seem to matter much what kind of site you were on. I think the ad space was sold through a company that had no direct relation to the website hosting the banners, and apparently no one was doing quality control to confirm the ads were okay for where they were being used.
Similarly: How old were you when you first started using social media?
EG Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.
There should be an option of I have never really used social media (my case).
Substack is an option.
How long have you been reading ACX has no option between 1-2 years and since it was SSC! I'm not misremembering that ACX has been around for at least 4 years, am I?
Since 2021. But yeah, that ol' question needs an update. https://slatestarcodex.com/2021/01/21/introducing-astral-codex-ten/
It's really easy to make a mistake in the "annual salary" question if you live in a country where income is usually expressed per-month. Stackoverflow surveys confirmed this, they got unusually weird results from Poland, Czech Republic etc, it turns out this was the reason. I literally thought about the Stackoverflow blog post on this when I saw the question, but then did all the calculations in my head in monthly amounts, converted and still almost made the mistake.
I suggest splitting the question into two, an income question and whether you're expressing as monthly or annually. This would complicate result processing but not by much, you can convert the results back to annual with a simple Excel formula.
I was more confused by "pre-tax". I ignored my payroll-taxes. Also, did not add the child-benefits, "Kindergeld" (ca. 10k/year with 3 kids). Hope that is ok. Similar ballpark.
I think you probably meant child benefits / allowance since you mentioned "Kindergeld", which is money the state pays you because you have a child. Child support is money that a parent usually pays after after a divorce to support the child living with the other parent or someone else (Kindesunterhalt).
Ja, das war falsch. Will edit. Danke!
In standard US terms, for a salaried or hourly employee, "pre-tax income" means the amount your employer pays you in wages and bonuses (including stock awards and profit sharing, if applicable) before payroll and income taxes are withheld.
Tax credits (government benefits paid through the income tax system) are not counted; e.g. our equivalent of kindergeld is the "child tax credit", where the federal government credits a certain amount of money towards your taxes owed for each child you have, and you get a refund check if this means you withheld more money than you end up owing after tax credits.
Other government payments usually aren't counted, either, unless they're earned income (i.e. wages for current government employees or pensions for retired employees) or monetary benefits intended to support you while you aren't working due to disability, old age, temporary situational unemployment, etc.
Thank you! Thus I failed. ;) In German: 'Brutto' (pre-tax) resp. "netto" (post-t). Usually, statisticians will ask for "brutto", as the netto will vary strongly. Should Scott want to check our income or how it correlates with other stuff, it would make more sense to ask for post-tax, I presume.
Another thing that's not obvious to me is whether capital income is supposed to be included. (The question was "annual income" IIRC.)
All income i would assume.
I also wonder about this question.
Yup, this. Also Europeans just don't think about pre-tax, it's automatically deducted. I just think about how much money gets into my account each month (I get an SMS from the bank with it).
I’m definitely aware of my pre tax annual income here in Ireland. That’s what’s on the contract and what is negotiated on getting a job.
Not fully I guess, because there are a bunch of taxes companies pay directly for employing you (but still go towards your pension, health care etc) that aren't included in your pay package. I have no idea if this situation is the same in the US.
Over here employer taxes or PRSI is not that large a take compared to some of Europe.
It’s also not something we worry about as it’s not really something that employees need to know.
I'm also not certain where employer taxes would end and expenses to employ you would begin.
Office space (not so much now I guess), employer laptops and phones, etc.
Being in part responsible for frickin' payroll, I wish more of them bloody *did* know it, too many times having to explain to working adults who have been working for years why their pay is different this week (due to how the PAYE system works) and no, they have to get on to Revenue to fix it, I can't do it for them.
It's not simply young people in their first job, there's a lot of older people who have no idea how the tax system works, tax rates, credits, etc.
In the US, there's a payroll or "FICA" (Federal Insurance Contributions Act) tax that is used to fund Social Security (old age and disability pensions) and Medicare (singlish-payer health care coverage for retirees). It's assessed so half is nominally paid by the employee and half nominally paid by the employer. The employee half is counted as part of your take-home income, while the employer half is not.
The FICA rate is 7.65% for each half (15.3% total) on the first $168,800 of payroll income and 1.35% of payroll income above $168,800. If you're self-employed, you pay both halves of the tax (15.3% below the limit and 2.7% above it).
Most people who are salaried or hourly employees never think about the employer side of the payroll tax unless we're economics or public policy nerds because we never see or hear about that money.
So what is the primary negotiation number for a European white collar employee? In the US its this "pre-tax" salary. I am hoping the answer is not something like non one negotiates, its determined by your union.
Same in the UK. There's a bunch of stuff considered after (e.g. bonus, pension salary sacrifice + company matching, etc).
But on negotiation and how you "think" about it is gross yearly
When you are taking a new job, how does the job offer specify what your wages would be? Do they just tell you pre-tax income (and that's the last time you think about it), or are they able to calculate your take-home income and quote that to you?
In the US, it's always pre-tax income quoted in job offers and annual salary reviews because our tax system is hairy enough that your employer can't know with confidence and precision what your after-tax income would be, as it depends on if you have income from other sources (second job, hobby business, taxable investment income, etc), how many children you have, whether or not you own your home and if so how much you pay in property taxes and mortgage interest, how much you give to charity, whether or not you're married and if so how much income does your spouse have, how much you pay into tax-advantaged retirement savings, etc.
Not true, and generalizing about Europeans is silly in general, since it's like 50 pretty different countries. E.g. Swedes definitely think about pre-tax, but by that they mean post payroll tax but pre income tax, so pre like half the taxes.
This, and also "pre-tax" is a loaded question in more than one way.
Here in Spain, for example, we pay (among quite a few other minor taxes) two main ones on our paycheck:
1) Income tax (IRPF) - This is the run-of-the-mill progressive tax, bracketed, you pay more (in %) if you earn more. Brackets go from 15 to 45%, approx.
2) Social Security (pays for public medical system + public pensions + job loss insurance + lots of minor public services and pensions), which is paid part from your paycheck, but in largest part "by your employer". The total amount is 30%, partition is 6%/24%. Meaning that, if you get, like, 2000€/month, "gross", a surcharge of around 600€ is added. So, your employer is paying 2600€, from which you see your "gross" or "pre-tax" of ~2000€, from which you pay your part of Social Security, income tax and assorted minor taxes, and get your "take-home" pay of ~1600€ (I'm deliberately simplifying it a lot). Thus, my "pre-tax" does not match at all my full salary cost.
Besides, if you are curious, this Social Security is apart, and added, to the regular income tax. So our real tax brackets reach upwards of 50% with ease, and in some cases as high as 75%.
I'd suggest adding a pre-tax and post-tax question, both for consistency reasons and for us financial/fiscal nerds. And clarifying about if taxes are to be only considered "income" taxes.
I think he's talking about the gross income as it shows up on your tax forms. I'm assuming there's a tax form I guess.
It's a *very rough* guess as to how financially prosperous you are. The converter in the link only does currency conversion. There's no PPP, no taxes (income or consumption) included. I didn't check while I was doing it, but someone who's in the position of a traditional housewife could answer 0 income, and it could be completely misleading.
Also, I wish the question stated whether you were asking for personal income our household income. I literally do not know what to answer.
I answered with individual since it seemed like most (all?) other questions were about us as individuals, but I also found this ambiguous.
I'm also confused about the correct answer here. My salary? Total income from our 2023 tax return divided by two? (It's sitting right here on my desk!) Total income from 2023 tax return?
This isn't just an ACX issue though, I feel like every dataset that gets into income for households of mixed composition ends up dealing with it in a very unclear fashion.
He’s asking individual questions about personal income. There are some questions that mention family, this isn’t one of them. I don’t find that unclear at all, on this or other surveys. Income is all personal income.
Probably right. This may be my accumulated frustration from years of dealing with poorly arranged household income datasets speaking.
I agree with that. Income is useless without taking into account wealth. A pensioner playing down his wealth will have a low income but potentially a good lifestyle. Here, though, Scott is possible trying to associate what class people think they are with gross earnings.
Yes. I am a full time homemaker (nice to see that was an option on the survey), so my individual income is 0.
I answered with our household income, since that is what affects my other answers like social class, willingness to pay for a subscription, etc.
Thanks, I've capitalized annual.
Actually says ANNUL now which was very confusing.
Yep, agreed on both this and pre-tax problems. Russian salaries, for instance, have a weird situation where there's the official number (let's call it 100%) but the employer actually pays ~129% and the employee receives 87% because 13% count against the salary but the rest are social payments on top.
Your gross is 100%.
This is like when I did a little investigation into names. There is no limit on the number of names a person can have at any one time, or over a lifetime, or types of names, or limit to how long each name can be, or the characters in any given name. This is for real world people.
I'm not sure how you ask a question like this in a way where you can figure out a reasonably reliable answer as to how personally prosperous a person is, when the person could be living anywhere in the world.
Even "gross income" is only a vague wave in the direction of prosperity. How much you can actually spend varies a lot.
I am confused by what counts as social media. For facebook/instagram/tiktok/etc I never visit or only when absolutely forced. For twitter there's <5 accounts I occasionally visit, and I've never posted/liked/etc.
But I do watch youtube videos, subscribe, like, maybe comment once per month. Does this count as using social media? Feels like no to me, but "What social media do you use?" seems to think so.
The mental health section isn't very specific on timeframes. I read it as current, major or persistent issues rather than historical ones. But it could be read different ways depending on how much you make mental health a part of your personality.
The US viewpoint doesn't quite fit with UK realities. The Tories are not really conservative any more. Socioeconomic class is based more around culture than money. A US detached house is probably equivalent to a UK terraced one. But yes that perhaps falls into nitpicky.
How happy are you with your paid subscription? I feel frustrated not to be able to say that it enriches my life by informing me of things I had not thought about. It doesn't so much change my views as provide me with things to have views about.
How do you figure a UK terrace is equivalent to a US detached? I thought UK terrace= US rowhouse.
I agree about class though.
I think the point being made is that equivalent price/value of a US detached house will get you a terraced house in the UK, which is just saying that the UK has terrible quality housing (space per person as well as quality).
Oh. I was assuming the question was just about the physical house. If Scott wants that information, it would be simpler to ask about the value of the house.
Yes I think that is about right. Even if you have a posh job in London (which is where all the posh jobs are) you are still going to be living in a flat or terraced house.
There’s plenty of homes , from large old houses, to even council (or ex council ) houses with gardens in London. Not necessarily affordable but people do live there. I don’t think that New York or Boston are all that different anyway.
How should a PhD student déclare their work status? I'm technically still a student but I don't have any classes, I have a salary and I mainly do research and teach so I feel my experience is closer to academics, although I don't feel confortable calling myself this either
Same. I don't know how to properly answer that question. Is a PhD student and junior researcher at a government research center a job for the government, or a non-profit, or an academy, or a student?
What is the difference of living in a "condo" or an "apartment" (up to 10 units resp. 10+units)? All right, I answered "apt. up to ten". Thus picking nits. But I am confused, honestly. Anyone knows?
I'm accustomed to "condo" being a property that you own in a complex of such properties; an "apartment" is a property that you rent from the owner.
Ah. I got that wrong then as I own an apartment in a property with exactly ten units. Condo is not common outside the US
Same I think, I own an apartment in a much larger complex and answered large apartment instead of condo. Condo term is not used at all in Australia.
Yeah, this threw me too – I live in a co-op in an apartment building with more than 11 units. I chose "condo / duplex / rowhouse / etc.", but I wasn't sure what the intent of the question was, so that might have been wrong.
Appreciate the answers! Seems a single "apartment" is always "rented" - while condos or houses are owned. But as all of those are often let for rent and thus "rented" - we are still confused. Or maybe Scott thinks: 'Condos that are not apartments'. Or: "cheaper, poorer, crowded places" (apartments can be quite large and expensive, though).
A condo is a type of ownership; houses and apartments are types of buildings. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condominium
Income Status
I am disabled without benefits. Can’t seem to find my option and "post significant money-making" sounds a bit cynical.
I'll add it next time, sorry.
<3
Some question are unclear. How do I rate my attractiveness? Should I rate it with respect to my age and sex? Should an average 20 years old girl rate herself more attractive than the same woman at the age of 60?
What is life satisfaction? Over what time horizon? Weeks, monthes, years? Same about many other question. There is no time horizon given, making a question unclear.
What is gender? This concept is so vague that I think I don't have gender identity.
> How old were you when you got your own smartphone?
What should I answer if I never had a smartphone? And what is "my own"? If it was given to my by work, and did not belong to me, does it count?
I'm in the same boat as you re: smartphone; I left the question blank, since that seemed to be the most consistent with the rest of the survey's methodology.
I went with how attractive I am right now in my middle age. Not sure about women, but as a man, I've gotten older, balder, a little fatter, and more gray hair. Aging definitely has an impact, but some people age better than others.
I figured it was most fair to answer the attractiveness question on the scale of all humans of all ages rather than just all male humans in their 40s.
I answered same as you with an absolute scale rather than relative. So now I'm quite curious to know what percentage of survey participants answered it the same way.
>Should an average 20 years old girl rate herself more attractive than the same woman at the age of 60?
I mean, the Oktrends blog and Dataclysm the book would definitely say so, and the 20 year old would get several OOM more messages?
I feel like there's a pretty central interpretation to most of these, and quibbling about the details or edge cases is impractical and just leads to lizardman constants in the answers.
They're social science survey answers, not tablet-carven truths that need to be rigorously provable. Just answer whatever you feel like the right answer is.
For disorders, how should marriage and adoption be counted? I assume it's about genetic relatives, so if my wife or adopted child or step-mom has a condition, I should leave that off?
Yes, please ignore any nongenetic relatives.
I didn't think of Substack as a social medium, so I had to go back and revise an earlier answer. Does LiveJournal count? I've been active there since around 2002.
Yeah, also came here to ask this. LJ is kind of "mother of all social media", but then again, like Substack, it's not QUITE the same as FB/IG etc.
Notes made it much more social, but if all you do is subscribe to people and read the emails without commenting, it really isn’t a social media. Of course, you commented here, exposing yourself to the social media