I recently watched a really interesting BBC interview with Kyle Chayka. He wrote the New Yorker article “ Are You Experiencing Posting Ennui?,” which I also recommend reading.
In the conversation, he talks about why so many people, especially younger generations, like GEN Z, are stepping back from posting personal moments online. The author calls this trend “Posting Zero,” where ordinary users are simply opting out of posting altogether.
The video touches on how our social media feeds have become saturated with ads, influencer posts, and now AI-generated content, pushing out the everyday moments once shared by regular users.
The article in The New Yorker is also fascinating:
I’ll date myself- but I remember MySpace & the Polish NaszaKlasa
and this made me reflect on how social media has changed over the years, and how many of us no longer feel comfortable or motivated to share our lives so openly online.
What do you guys think? Have you changed the way you use social media? Or were you never fans to begin with?
Thanks for sharing even though the New Yorker article is behind a paywall, but I’ll watch the YT video for sure. Regarding your question I’ve never been a fan of social media to begin with. During my first years when I was active on Social Media like FB and Instagram as well starting from 2009, but even then I’ve never posted nearly as often as many others. I never felt the urge to share anything from my life with the public. On the other side this was fueled due to seeing how other people within my social circle starting posting basically meaningless stuff which ultimately concluded into just presenting themselve in an overly artificial and unrealistic way. This or sharing thoughts like that they took a dump recently (no joke)
Soon after social media started to get ad-ridden and polluted by algorithms in conjunction with dull online games. Not to mention hate speech took off more and more. Also the huge data and privacy scandals regularly popping up about how Big Tech is misusing your personal data. Therefore early on I came to the conclusion that social media was a mistake and is adding nothing meaningful or of any value to my personal life and so I simply abandoned it altogether.
Nowadays I’m only passively using BlueSky and reddit first and foremost because of some few select accounts which I’m really interested in, but even those are not in any way necessary. I’m currently thinking of canceling my BlueSky account because of this. Only one left might be reddit since I use that as some kind of modern forum combined with a search engine. reddit just offers so much value if you need support or insight for whatever you’re looking for. This plus reddit isn’t social media focused on presenting yourself, but instead connecting with like minded people about shared interests and topics. It all depends on how you use it.
On my Mudita Kompakt I don’t use any of it sideloaded and I don’t plan to. I think this says all about how much priority social media has in my life.
I’ve finally had the time to catch up on the content posted here and in addition to what I’ve already said in my post above I just can say I fully agree with what has been discussed in the linked content.
I have certainly drastically reduced my social media use. In fact the only things I occasionally use are Mastodon (federated social networking) and Facebook. I only use the latter for a few groups related to one of my hobbies where I can only really find out about events in my area if I’m part of the group. I have added barely anyone on there and do not post apart from to the group. I used to use Twitter and Facebook a lot more but I felt it was not a productive use of my time or particularly healthy for me. The ads and the content pushed by their algorithms are not what I actually want to see, but what it thinks will make me spend more time on there. In the short term they were right: if I saw something shocking or controversial I might linger, but in the long term these algorithms are actually having the opposite effect to what these companies want: they are shedding people like myself entirely from their services. Once you quit these things you realise how little you need them. It’s something I’m sure social media companies are starting to think about. I would pose the question: what happens to a business when it’s success is predicated on people’s attention and that attention starts to wane.
This programme sounds interesting - I haven’t listened to it yet but will make a note to do so. Great discussion on here, thanks to all for sharing.
I was inspired by this thread & looked into the idea that social media use really is on the decline. While writing, I thought about MySpace (yes, I’m that old) and how much the whole landscape has changed since then:
And I would love to hear from you:
Do you feel like social media is less about your friends and more about viral content? Have you stopped using it altogether? Or made changes in the way you connect?
How do you keep your digital life more intentional and connected?
I had to notice the decline of my mental state and understand the connection between that and how meta was increasingly twitched the alGODrithm towards polarising and depressing content. But when I gave up on it I became so much happier and relaxed I couldn’t believe.
It was fun back in the day when it actually showed the stuff that was published by the ones I cared about.
I remember the exodus from grono.net, when it was handed over to paying users (who were able to wreck the communities). Then Facebook seemed to be a pure, blissful place where one could follow their friends. That was circa 18 years ago ;D
I’ve read that phrase few years ago: it’s like a mall, used to be fun when we were in high school, now we avoid it at all costs, only visit it when we have to buy something or look at the old people screaming at each other.
I still do use Facebook on my laptop for some groups, but what I did is:
Unobserved 99,9% of “friends”, if we don’t meet online it feels meaningless to scroll through hundreds of daily updates on everything, can’t cope caring that much about every person I know.
Installed couple addons to the browser, such as FB Purity and News Feed Eradicator. The latter is basically a front page cut-off for many social media, you can unlock it purposefully for limited time chunks. I can’t get FB Purity to cut out shorts though, but entering FB just to check on few groups and get out is cool.
