> That's why people would pay money to quit.

That's not really what the survey said. In fact, it found that the overwhelming majority of users would pay good money to continue using those platforms.

> The answers suggest users value these platforms a lot, on average by US$59 per month for TikTok and $47 for Instagram. An overwhelming 93 per cent of TikTok users and 86 per cent of Instagram users would be prepared to pay something to stay on them.

$59/month was the average claim for how much they'd pay to stay on TikTok.

They even cite other studies that came up with similar numbers, so it's not a fluke.

The part about paying to be off of them was about a hypothetical scenario where everyone on their campus agreed to some deal where they all stopped using one of the platforms together at the same time.

That's how they arrived at those weird numbers for paying to quit as a group. Like all studies that ask hypothetical questions about how much people would pay for some outcome, the real world value is always less. When you start introducing impossible constraints like "everyone else would quit" it becomes even more disconnected from reality.