Every year, Bond Capital’s Mary Meeker produces an immense slide deck of internet trends. You can see the whole thing here. I’ve chosen two slides to highlight. First, there’s this one. Before you look, see if you can figure out what I find interesting about it.

Granted, this is only two years of data, but what I found interesting was how static it is. YouTube and Instagram have grown, but the other platforms are all basically flat. There’s nothing new making much of an impact in the social media space, and Facebook, for all the flak it gets, continues to putter along in first place.

Then there’s this, just because:

The worst aspect of social media is that . . . it wrecks your sleep. It’s pretty astonishing that so many people recognize this, but go on being addicted to social media anyway. It’s no wonder so many people complain about sleep these days.

The other thing I find interesting is that, apparently, all of the good and bad averages out almost perfectly to zero. This doesn’t necessarily mean that social media actually has a null effect on your health, since some of these things might count more than others. Still, it’s intriguing to think that the net impact of this enormous industry might be precisely nothing.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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