Gartner Warns 40% of Data Centers May Face Power Shortages by 2025 Amid AI Surge

According to a new report from Gartner, almost 40% of data centers will have no power to function completely by 2025. Meta, Google, Microsoft and Elon Musk's companies are using a lot of data centers with hundreds to thousands of graphic cards which use a lot of energy. Elon Musk’s xAI supercomputer is expected to reach 500 Terawatt-hours by 2027. This is almost the double power that is needed right now to run a data center.

Meta is also building a lot of new data centers, while Microsoft is also looking to add more data centers. Microsoft is also planning to use Three Mile Island as the nuclear power there can help to fulfill energy needs. Amazon and Google are also looking for nuclear power to run their data centers.

VP analyst at Gartner, Bob Johnson, says that more data centers are needed to handle and run the big amounts of data used by large language models(LLMs) and AI applications. However, this can cause short term as well as long term power shortages which can cause some problems in generation, transmission and distribution of power. Gartner also predicts that electricity prices are also going to increase because of its high demand and it will very likely cause carbon emissions. Overall, this can play a huge part in climate change.

• Also read: AI Workforce Biased? Shocking Report Shows Women’s Skills Going Unrecognized

Even though many experts believe that AI can help humans solve the climate crisis, their tech is hugely responsible for causing problems in the environment. The only way to reduce carbon emissions is by using renewable energy sources and using efficient computer hardware.

Image: DIW-AIgen

Read next: Teens Lack Media Literacy Skills, Exposing Them to Misinformation and Conspiracy Theories On Social Media
by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

Teens Lack Media Literacy Skills, Exposing Them to Misinformation and Conspiracy Theories On Social Media

According to a new study by The News Literacy Project, most teens see a lot of conspiracy theories online but they do not have any media literacy to differentiate what’s true from false. The study was done among 1,000 teens of ages 13 to 18. The study says that many teens cannot tell if an information or news online is biased or not, and they trust it without finding the sources. This shows that teens are not being taught media literacy which is important for them in their daily lives.

80% of the respondents of the survey said that they frequently see conspiracy theories on their social media feeds, while 20% reported seeing them daily. Even though teens do not believe every single conspiracy theory they see online, 81% said they do believe one or two of them. Commonly conspiracy theories on the internet include covid vaccines being dangerous, earth being flat and 2020 elections being rigged.

The survey says that even though teens are seeing a lot of conspiracy theories, they are not being educated about media literacy. Less than 40% of the respondents said that their schools have taught them about media literacy during the past two months. The survey also asked respondents to identify whether an ad, photo or article is real or fake.

More than half of the teens were unable to identify fake content. Teens were also asked if they’ll believe a press release from Coca-Cola or Reuters. 56% answered Reuters and this shows that teens are more likely to believe well-known brands over a credible news source. What teens could really identify was photos. 70% of the respondents could tell an AI-generated image to a real image.

70% of the teens also said that they believe that news organizations are biased. 15% of the respondents also said that they watch or read news to stay informed on different matters. The news medium trusted most by teens was Local TV, followed by TikTok. Out of all the things in the survey,all teens agreed on one thing. 94% of the respondents said that schools should offer some type of media literacy degree.

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

Global App Spend Surpasses $110B in Q3, Driven by 12.4% YoY Growth Across Google Play and iOS

According to Sensor Tower’s Digital Market Index report, Q3 of 2024 set some high records across the digital economy. Mobile app economy saw its peak this quarter as the global consumer spend across Google Play and iOS surpassed $38 billion, which is a 12.4% increase year-over-year. Other sectors like digital advertising and retail media also set some records on mobile apps. There was a 10% YoY increase seen in the digital ad market in the US and the total digital ad spend reached $30 billion in Q3 2024. There was a 5% increase in other markets too like Germany, UK and Canada.

On September 5th 2024, the global consumer spend on Google Play and iOS reached a $100 billion milestone, which is quicker than it was in 2023. By the end of Q3 2024, global consumer spend surpassed $110 billion. There were some news trends seen on mobile apps. Games were always dominating but in Q3 2024, there was a 25% YoY rise in mobile apps too. Games still have the top spot with $20.4 billion consumer spend while apps had $17.7 billion consumer spend.

Europe saw a strong mobile performance with consumer spend rising by 25% YoY. A 13% and 6% YoY growth YoY was seen in North America and Asia respectively. The US is still going to be a dominating market for app developers even though it is lagging behind Europe. Europe’s growth in consumer spend was higher than the US, but the US still had $1.1 billion YoY growth which is higher than Europe.

A year ago, TikTok became the first app to reach $1 billion in a quarter and it got $1.5 billion in consumer spend in Q3 2024 because of mobile monetisation. Other top ten apps had somewhat the same consumer spend this quarter with Instagram, YouTube, Google, Disney+ and Tinder being at the top five. In terms of number of downloads, Instagram surpassed TikTok in Q3 2024. Threads also got into the top ten most downloaded apps in Q3 2024. ChatGPT also made it to the top ten, while Google Gemini was third in quarter-over-quarter download growth. All of the AI chatbots and image generators got $315 million in consumer spend while they got 360 million downloads, showing 26% and 15% QoQ growth respectively.

The digital ad spend in the US also reached $30 billion across OTT, mobile and desktop in Q3 2024. There was a 10% increase YoY and this suggests that it is going to increase in the holiday season. There was also 10% growth in the UK and 7% growth in Germany. Two new markets, South Korea and Japan, were also added in this quarter.

Read next: Google to Withdraw Political Ads in EU Under Upcoming Transparency Standards
by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

Google to Withdraw Political Ads in EU Under Upcoming Transparency Standards

Next year, Google plans to stop showing political ads to European Union users. The new EU rules—meant to promote transparency in political ads and protect voters—bring complex challenges for platforms like Google, making it hard to identify and manage ads across diverse regions. Google's concern is that the new regulations go too far, casting a broad net over what qualifies as a political ad, leading to operational uncertainty.

Google's strategy is to step back from political advertising in Europe ahead of these rules, which take effect in October 2025. Google’s decision isn't new; it has paused political ads in places like France, Canada, and Brazil when regulations lacked clear guidelines.

• Also read: A New Survey Finds Executives and Employees Think About AI Implementation Differently

The upcoming EU rules demand that political ads be labeled, showing who paid, how much they paid, and which elections or referendums they’re linked to. Advertisers also need user consent for targeting, and personal data of minors or sensitive information can’t be used. YouTube, too, must comply, banning paid political promotions under the EU's standards.

Back in February, Google had flagged the upcoming rule’s ambiguity, worried that unclear definitions might disrupt their ad recommendations. Google's current response is to adapt early and keep evaluating its approach.

Image: DIW-Aigen

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by Asim BN via Digital Information World

A New Survey Finds Executives and Employees Think About AI Implementation Differently

According to a survey of 17,000 desk workers worldwide by Slack, employees and executives have different thoughts when it comes to using AI and its adoption in workplaces. 97% of the executives say that they are planning to invest on AI implementation, and 97% said that they want to do it as soon as possible. In the past month, the percentage of Americans who were happy to work with AI dropped from 45% to 36%. The UK, France and Japan also showed a decline in interest related to AI implementation.

This shows that even though many business leaders and executives are investing more and more on AI, employees do not seem too enthusiastic about it. On the other hand, there was some increase in AI usage in the US. According to the estimations, the usage of AI increased from 32% to 33% between March and August 2024. This is a slow growth rate, but it is still something.

76% of the employees surveyed also said that they are feeling an urgency to learn AI and it is making them anxious and less productive. But there are also employees who say that technology helps them with administrative tasks (87%), core work projects (80%) and creative work (81%). But they think that using AI is going to increase their workload.

Top three reasons why workers do not want to use AI are because they think that they are cheating (47%), they fear that other people will see them as lazy (46%) and fear that others will see them as less competent (46%).

Read next: Beyond Simple Math, AI Hits a Wall—FrontierMath Shows Where It’s Stuck
by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

Meta's Threads Might Get Ads As Early As The Beginning of Next Year

Meta’s social media app Threads could be launching ads sooner than later.

The company just shared how it’s got major plans to introduce ads to the latest platform as early as 2025. This is certainly a shock considering how its parent firm Meta announced previously that this wouldn’t be the case.

The news comes to us thanks to a report published by The Information that spoke about a possible release in January 2025. This means Meta can monetize on the popular service than what may have been originally planned by Meta’s executives.

This year in August, the platform struck 200 million users which CEO Mark Zuckerberg referred to as a major milestone. He even hailed the platform to be the firm’s next billion-user service. This meant it would certainly be making loads of revenue through it but efforts on this end wouldn’t come too soon and would instead be a multi-year effort.

All of the latest products by Meta take time between shipping and scaling them into profitable businesses, Zuckerberg adds. The firm’s latest earnings call had CFO Susan Li adding how Threads might not be a major driver for 2025 as far as revenue was concerned.

As per reports from The Information, the slow rollout for ads on Threads will begin in January which is so soon. It’s also unclear if this effort will expand soon or not. The number one priority is to design consumer value first. For now, Meta’s spokesperson says it has no form of revenue generation or monetization on the app.

These newly reported plans for Meta showcase just how fast the service continues to grow with time. 275M people are working each month and seeing more than one million people signing up each day says so much, Zuckerberg highlights. Therefore, all of this makes the app one of the biggest alternatives for Musk’s X platform that really came into existence in the past few years.

Meanwhile, another famous app that offers features like Twitter is Bluesky whose user figures similarly saw a major rise recently. It went on to include one million new people in the past week, as confirmed by the tech giant on Tuesday. This is certainly not as much as what Threads could accomplish with 15M users but it’s definitely getting somewhere.

Similar to Threads, it has no advertising and the firm hopes to experiment with all features linked to subscriptions.

Image: DIW-Aigen

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• Experience, Industry, and Company Size Drive Social Media Managers’ Salaries, New Survey Finds
by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

Experience, Industry, and Company Size Drive Social Media Managers’ Salaries, New Survey Finds

Earning money for a livelihood has been a primary staple for every individual in this century. The path to earning a good living has many forms, such as taking the conventional route of getting formally educated and doing a job or starting a business. However, since the late 2010s, the trend has now diverted towards more ways than ever imagined, and one of those ways is through social media management.

In this blog, we will delve deep into how much social media managers earn. The statistics are taken from a survey conducted in September, which received 2,280 responses from 350 different cities and over 35 countries.

But first, before getting into the earnings, it is essential to share the respondents' background for deeper clarification since social media influencing management depends on several social factors.

Median Salaries Relation to Working Experience

Being experienced in social media management significantly affects how much a person will earn, as there is a direct proportionality between the experience years you have under your belt and the amount of money you make.

• Related: How Many Hours Do People Work Around the World?

For starters, with 2 years or less experience, you’ll like to earn an average of $61,660.34 based on responses. With three to four years of experience, the average salary will likely be $72,762.10. With an intermediate experience of 5 to 9 years, the average salary is likely to be around $92,424. The highly advanced social media manager with experience of 12+ years earns the most, with an average of $145,041.31, while those having 10 to 12 years of experience earn $117,453.37.

The median salary for social media mangers are $80,000 with a benchmark ranging from $52,500 to $101,400.

For different employment types have no major difference in the median salary between them as freelancers earn $83,704.40, working through an agency get a median pay rate of $85,000 and in-house employees make $81,000. Although, there isn’t any difference in the salary of employment variation but they working style and the format are highly different.

With working from home being the most popular choice since the COVID-19 era, 71% of the respondents belonged to this category.

Median Salary Per Industries

The highest-paying industry for social media management is the finance industry, with a median salary of $119,111. Then, in second place comes the tech industry, which has a median salary of $108,000. Following that, in third place is the entertainment industry, with a median salary of $99,041. Fourth place goes to the fashion industry, with a median income of $98,000. Fifth is taken by beauty and self-care as its social media managers earn $95,000.

Industries like freelancing pay a median salary of $89,770; similarly, for the video games industry, it is $88,500.

• Also read: Study Reveals Prolonged Standing May Pose Health Risks, Challenging Desk Job Solutions

The least-paying industries with median salaries are mostly not-for-profit and sports-related companies. In contrast, the highest pay recorded in the survey was $500,00 for tech coming working in-house.

Company Size and Median Salary

It may be surprising to many readers about the connection between company size and the median salary. As it turns out, there is a deep connection between the number of people who work for a company and the salary they get.

Companies with over 1,000 employees have the highest salaries at around $102,000. For companies with 500 to 1,000 employees, the median salary is $90,000. Similarly, small companies with 50 to 100 workers earn around $75,000. Newly started with low employees, around 1 to 10 people, have the lowest median salary of $60,320. However, self-employed people earn a salary of $87,213.

Salary Negotiation and Layoffs

Regarding negotiation, the average starting salary of the people who don’t negotiate is $86,307, and those who negotiate are $100,950. Furthermore, 51.3% of social media managers negotiated for an increase in their salaries; out of those 51.3%, 76.4% were successful. Additionally, the companies with more employees, such as more than 1,000 workers, have the highest layoff rate of 35%. In contrast, those companies with less than ten employees have a layoff rate of only 2%.

Study/Charts courtesy of: Link in Bio / Rachel Karten 

Read next: AI Job Growth Accelerates: Top Industries Seeking Skilled Professionals

by Ahmed Naeem via Digital Information World