Pew Research has released its latest numbers on social media use, but as usual they leave out NextDoor, one of the most fascinating social media platforms out there. I have updated Pew's chart to include them:
The 33% number for NextDoor is based on their own claims, not survey data, so take it with a grain of salt. But it's probably in the right ballpark, putting them squarely in the company of Pinterest, TikTok, and LinkedIn.¹
Anyone who's signed up for NextDoor and been bombarded by their email updates—which are deliberately hard to get rid of—knows that certain subjects are evergreen. Lost pets. Does anyone know a good handyman/gardener/plumber? There's a suspicious looking guy nearby.
It's the last one, of course, that's most striking. Without, admittedly, any real evidence, I partly blame NextDoor for the recent surge in people who are frightened of crime even though crime rates are historically low. It's hard not to think crime is rampant when you see these kinds of messages at least daily and often two or three times a day. And that's just my experience in Irvine, which is literally the safest community in the entire country.
It was bad enough when local news stations started dedicating their first ten minutes almost exclusively to crime. A man in Burbank was accosted and robbed tonight, police say. Really? That's the top news story? Yes it is, as long as there's video—and these days there is.
But now we also have NextDoor to scare us on a daily basis. No wonder we're all jumping out of our skins.
¹NextDoor almost certainly has a considerably lower engagement level than its more traditional competitors, but its basic usage rate is still pretty high.
Nextdoor is a toxic cesspool of mostly useless depressing info plus pleas to buy someone's junk as if it actually had monetary value. In my area the conservative activists are obsessed with pushing the crime and taxes are making our area an -hole.
If It Bleeds It Leads started a long time ago. I remember turning off Van Amberg when a video on his news program panned down the blood trail on a sidewalk.
Then news went to pretty folks and happy talk.
I looked at it just long enough to realize that knowing more about my neighbors made me think less of them. It is easier to be distantly pleasant when I can pretend.
Who ever use. So, even once would be a yes. Not a great proxy for popularity.
A couple of my wingnut cousins are absolutely certain there are large parts of town that are essentially Escape From New York.
Our lovely Burg of Paradise could hardly be less like Escape From New York, yet they are certain of it and there is no shaking them.
I know one of them is barely able to turn on her iPad so I really don't think it's NextDoor.
I joined NextDoor at the encouragement of my next-door neighbor. I quickly grew to dislike it.
Having grown up in a small town, if I walked across town, my mom got five siting reports from other citizens before I reached home. Everybody knew everyone else’s business. Years later, I live in the DC metro area on a large wooded lot and fairly-close neighbors - but I find a lot of solitude where I live. The last thing I want to know about is the neighborhood gossip.
I quickly dropped off NextDoor, and I’m a much happier person.
The one time I used Next Door it was after someone was arrested in my back yard. There were 3 sheriff's deputies (including the sheriff!) and 4 city cops, including a canine unit, so you'd think it was something big. Nope. Thanks to Next Door I learned it was just a stolen car on a joyride that crashed into another car right outside my house. One of the thieves was trying to hide in my yard. The guy who had his car stolen was the one who actually posted about it.
If you think that your neighborhood is crime free, Next Door might make you scared. If you think it takes a shooting for a half dozen squads to pull up, Next Door might convince you otherwise.
Before I retired, I hated Next Door and so did not use it. I visit regularly now, particularly for reviews of service providers and certain other community news. I have it registered to a distinct email account which I seldom visit and therefore avoid annoying notices etc. Don't love the site, but the value proposition is satisfactory.
I laughed imagining that as their tag line in advertising.
Nextdoor: the value proposition is satisfactory.
I use it for finding service providers, I've had better luck there than random shopping on Yelp. That being said, the stupidity is alarming. As is the number of people letting cats roam freely at night when coyotes are most active and then crying when their cat goes missing - those break my heart.
But the stupidity. Geesh. The minimum wage is why prices are going up, but nothing about corporate profits going up. But I get the quality of life problems and don't have an answer there, grown ups have been complaining about those darn kids since forever. There has always been package theft, now we have cameras to record it. There has always been car theft, now we have cameras to record it.
I do find it to be an interesting way to keep a finger on the pulse of what the chattering classes are chattering about, though.
Twice there were events in my neighborhood for which I wanted more information. One was a block party; one was supposedly a stabbing. Nextdoor had nothing about either event (which leads me to think the stabbing didn't happen).
I got off Nextdoor when some of the people in my area were seriously suggesting that we jointly contribute to hire a private security guard to wander around a 100-square block area to look out for criminals. (I've lived in this neighborhood for 34 years and never had any crime issues, so although nowhere is completely safe, I think my area is doing OK.) Someone in that Nextdoor thread who said they were a professional security guard insisted that a well-trained professional guard could tell, just by looking at someone, if they were a criminal.
I pointed out that if the hired guard was not infallible, and assaulted or killed someone they thought was a criminal, anyone who was part of this scheme would be on the hook for civil damages, and possibly criminal liability as well. I then got off Nextdoor and haven't been back since.
"a well-trained professional guard could tell, just by looking at someone, if they were a criminal."
I'm pretty sure I can guess the criteria used for this.
I was gonna go on Nextdoor but then I realized I’d have to shave about 100 IQ points off before they’d even allow me on the site. Even a lobotomy isn’t that powerful, I need a big old chunk of my brain removed to get there. So I guess I’ll never know what it’s like.
That seems like a very high percentage for nextdoor to me, "ever use" means "have ever used at anytime in the past". I think I created an account years ago, logged in once or twice, saw nothing useful and haven't been back since. And very few people I know use it but many, like me, tried it and quickly quit.
NextDoor threw me off when I said "Dogs are better than people." I think that's unremarkable but apparently on NextDoor it is hate speech.
I would have gotten mad but I was about to quit anyway. It's like watching a soap opera with the sound off.
When I'm bored I like to tweak the NIMBYs.
It's gotten me banned several times.
I had to leave NextDoor after it became filled with anti-DEI nuts and book banners. It was depressing to read. I tossed a liberal screed into the mix and signed off. Now I get emails asking me to come back.
In my neighborhood, NextDoor is mainly used by white people to warn each other when a black guy is out walking his dog.
Next Door is pretty aggressive (almost to the point of being scammy) about getting people to join and give contacts that it can then hassle into joining. I joined simply because I got an invite that looked like my neighbors were using it when in fact they weren't. I don't think it will have much staying power.
A decade ago there was something similar called Everyblock that was being rolled out, and I used it in Chicago. It was nice to have a place to discuss neighborhood level issues -- at least in Chicago where neighborhoods and neighborhood orgs are important in civic life. Where I live now, it would have less utility.
You can talk about this stuff on Facebook, but it's mixed in with Facebook's clutter. My neighborhood has a FB group, and it is useful a handful of times a year for little neighborhood type issues (which, thankfully for us, aren't a bunch of racist freakouts.) There was a coyote in the neighborhood, so a warning went out. Kids doing fundraisers. Someone's driveway cones were stolen. That kind of thing. Occasionally handy, but not enough to launch a new social media site.
The posts about black people in the neighborhood were bad enough, but the thing that drove me from Nextdoor were gun sales.
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