Social Media Platforms, Ranked By How Confusing They Are To Dads

April 25, 2018

Social media has become an indisputable part of everyday life over the past 15 years. These platforms have been around long enough that dads have somewhat adapted to them, but some are harder than others to understand. Here’s a list of 11 social media platforms, ranked by how confusing they are to dads.

11: Facebook

Facebook was the first format that your dad ever started using, and as such it’s the one that is the least confusing for him to use. In fact, your dad almost definitely uses Facebook more than you do. In the time it took to write this sentence, he’s posted one questionable political article, a news story about a goofy mugshot, and a post complaining about how long the line was at the post office this afternoon.

10: Twitter

Twitter is another OG social network that dads can operate without too much difficulty. We’ve already talked about the 11 things all dads to on Twitter, but this one rates slightly more confusing than Facebook only because half of dads haven’t figured out how to change their profile picture from the default egg.

9: LinkedIn

Dads with corporate jobs write about 80% of the articles posted on Linked In, which is comfortable enough to dads because it’s basically just a site to post their resumes. That said, they still somehow manage to accidentally click the “invite all your email contacts to LinkedIn” button at least once a year.

8: Google +

If your dad actually remembers that Google + is a thing (we checked, it apparently still is. We know, we’re surprised too!) than he wouldn’t have too much to stumble on with the platform. It’s basically Facebook, only like, a Facebook filled with whistling tumbleweeds because no one’s ever there.

7: Instagram

Dads are scared of Instagram, because it’s so popular among teenagers currently. If you really want to watch a dad struggle to comprehend something, try to explain to him what a Finsta is. But once that’s out of the way, the concept of “taking pictures of stuff you see” is well within a dad’s wheelhouse, though he will never understand what the fuss is about with the whole “filters” thing.

6: YouTube

YouTube is both the easiest and hardest platform for dads to understand, which is why it falls right in the middle as far as confusion goes.

Dads know how to watch videos and comment on videos, no problem. That all is very instinctive. And while some dads might be completely lost trying to upload their own videos, some dads can master that as well. But still, the platform confuses dads because of what becomes popular. South Park basically spent a whole episode trying to explain to dads why videos of people playing video games are so popular. And let’s not even get started on the children’s programming on the site.

5: Reddit

Dads have a hard enough time figuring out the technology behind a social media platform without having to learn a whole culture. Reddit has its own way of doing things, and exactly 0% of Reddit’s culture is set up with dads in mind (with the exception of r/daddit). Most dads will spend a good hour trying to figure out what the whole slash thing is about.

4: Venmo

3: Snapchat

Want to waste a good forty minutes of your dad’s time? Try to teach your dad how to set filters on Snapchat. It’s never going to happen. Snapchat is essentially magic to dads. “What? You made yourself spit out rainbows? What the heck!?”

2: Tumblr

There’s a non-zero chance that dad will confuse Tumblr with the gay dating ap, Grindr. Given the fact that Tumblr now is pretty much all just stoned people musing or Millennials making GIFs of their favorite shows, dads are not going to venture very far onto this site, we imagine.

1: Pinterest

Of course this would be the most confusing for dads. Pinterest is basically the anti-dad social media outlet. “So what, you like, pin recipes? And where do they go?” dads will ask. Well let’s be honest, dads will ask their wives that. Pinterest was made for moms. And nothing confuses a dad more than that.