From friends to followers - yes, social media made us lonely
The giant shift of social media that no one talks about
Welcome back to Dachi, the newsletter to live intentionally in a world that makes money by distracting you.
Social media is not social anymore:
In 2004, Facebook was born. It had many issues, but you couldn't say it was not focused on its social features.
Twenty years later, social media has mostly stopped being an extension of social relationships and has become the main source of mindless entertainment. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok are the Netflix's of short videos. Users are not "friends", they are "followers". They consume content, they don't create bonds. You might have noticed it yourself: if years ago you would go online to check your friends' updates, now you scroll through hundreds of short videos created by strangers.
It all happened under our noses. The underlying promise that social media would help our social life still feels there. But the promise is undelivered. Americans are lonelier than ever. The number of people with no close friends has quadrupled in the past 30 years going from 3% to 12%.
Why this happened
This shift from social media based on real connections, to one based on creator-audience relationships has evolutionary reasons. The common man's posts are too few and boring. But content creators' posts are much more grabbing and make sure that users stay on the app for long enough to show ads and monetize.
In fact, the two most used social media apps are YouTube and TikTok, which are pretty much entertainment platforms. The vast majority of users are passive consumers.
TikTok became so popular by doubling down on the direction that social media was heading in anyways: an endless stream of entertainment personalized to the individual. Obligations to their shareholders meant that the rest of social media had to follow this winning strategy to stay competitive.
It is not going to get better. In Meta’s second earning call of 2022, Zuckerberg said: “Feeds are going [...] to increasingly being driven by AI recommending content that you’ll find interesting from across Facebook or Instagram, even if you don’t follow those creators.”
We crave constant entertainment and we cannot stay alone with our thoughts. But just like junk food, what we crave is not necessarily what is healthy for us.
Social and media are on opposite sides of a spectrum
I find it useful to dissect the word social media into its two components: "social" and "media" (= in the sense of entertainment). Then I can look at my own usage and at which way it skews on. I imagine it on a spectrum.
Over time, social media has steadily prioritized its entertainment features over its relationship-building ones. However, it's relationships that make us happy. Take it as a rule of thumb that if you use social media like the average person, it is likely making you lonelier and more depressed than you could be.
With the lack of third places, and with so many friends that I don't have regular meet-ups scheduled, I find a lot of value in staying in touch with friends online. However, it's difficult to achieve a healthy balance, and I still have to regularly ask myself: "am I using social media more as entertainment or for social connections?" Because if I want to be entertained I'd rather watch a Netflix show in which I can immerse myself, instead of frying my dopamine system with short form videos.
I just know that I cannot and will not use social media like the average user binging random influencers' content. The research is clear, that will leave me more depressed, anxious, and lonely.
And even more simply: I don't want to spend my life dumb-scrolling, and it's sad that social media is trying to make me do exactly that.
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