Is Social Media, As Once We Knew It, Dead?

A young girl looking at social media apps, including TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and WhatsApp, on a smartphone on Nov. 12, 2019. (Peter Byrne/PA)

Social media, as it was initially intended, is changing. The good old social platforms that we all could just post anything on and be appreciated for are changing towards sharing on private groups due to the curated feeds the social platforms prioritise.

To the social media newbie consumer, this might come as a surprise, but content creators and analysts seem to have a different take on the issue.

Some of the latter told  MSN they were discouraged by the trend.

Tati Bruening, who is a photographer and content creator on Instagram, told MSM she was frustrated with Instagram swamping her feed with perfectly curated professional pictures and content but disregarding posts like her cooking a green beans dish, for example.

“It’s really bizarre to me that everyone’s gone to this place in their mind that content has to be so curated,” Bruening told MSN. “So curated that you can’t show what you’re cooking for dinner because that’s not cool enough.”

The problem, she argues, is with the platform’s algorithm, which the company introduced to deal with the competition from TikTok. The new code prioritizes algorithmically suggested posts instead of the chronologically showing feeds.

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Noticing this, Bruening launched a campaign back in 2022 called “Make Instagram Instagram Again,” where the content creator pushed for Meta to reverse the algorithm.

The campaign was supported by thousands of users, including some celebrities like  Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian, who had 686 million combined followers on Instagram at that point, and who told Instagram to “stop trying to be TikTok.”

Nevertheless, Instagram continued with its new trend and from a platform for regular people’s photos, it became a well-curated platform with meticulously planned content.

To overcome this, average people have now turned towards private groups and postings, using features like Close Friends, which increased the group chats where people feel safe to chat and share photos, be themselves, and not have to deal with the pressure to be perfect in certain shape or form, which is not what the original promise of Instagram was all about.

“There’s this very weird, unspoken social standard of what’s allowed on Instagram. I know that for my age group, it’s like you give up on it entirely, and then you just post only to your Close Friends or alternate accounts. There’s this sublayer of Instagram that’s much more true to what the app once was, but it is just not viewable to the general public,” said Bruening.

This observation of Bruening was confirmed even by the head of Instagram, Adam Mossery, who admitted for Business Insider that now users prefer direct messages, group chats and closed communities.  Thus the regular postings are done by influencers and content creators, whereas the non-creators prefer to share their lives with private groups.

So today, average users, marketers, influencers, and even social platform executives agree on one thing

Social Media, As Once We Knew It, Is Dead

Instagram still appears to be the most dynamic social media, but the emphasis is now changing from ‘social’ to ‘media.’

While other platforms like Facebook had many users or were generating more news (like Twitter), Instagram was more of a place to catch up with family and friends.

“You sort of end up in this world that is beautiful, and you are following your friends and following your family. How often do you get the chance to see the world through your second cousin’s eyes?” shared Jeffrey Gerson, a former Instagram product-marketing manager.

This uniqueness enabled Instagram to grow, but now it has started to change. Users have learned how to use filters, editing tools, and curation, so the once enjoyable, unedited platform has moved to become a place of consideration for what is cool now and how to stand out in the crowd.

The rules of Instagram have changed too. The platform has started to prioritise videos, followed by live-streaming and shopping. And though everyday people were still posting there, the content started to be dominated by curated, professional posts.

Many bloggers have made a career from it, and the platform started to encourage influencers to become more professional in using it by giving them technical support, helping them learn best practices, and even arranging discreet payment options for them.

This changed the tone of posting too, and Mosseri said during a recent interview for ‘20VC’podcast, “Your friends don’t post that much to the feed.”

The new trend was strengthened during the pandemic, as people were confined to their homes, and there was an inflow of photos “from people who either have a specific lifestyle or had specific talents,” according to Andrea Casanova, who is an influencer strategist.

This affected people’s will to post on their own feeds, as they saw the bar becoming too high.

“Culture, in general, has kept a lot of people from showing up because they don’t think their life is aesthetic, or they don’t think that they’re selling anything, so why would they post on social media? ‘I just don’t have the lifestyle that all of these creators have, so I don’t know what I would be sharing’ and therefore fall into this loop of never sharing anything,” said Ms. Casanova.

Is DM The Way Forward?

People seem tired of using social platforms that promote specific images and prefer to find comfort in closer communities.

“I’m honestly just tired of social media; I’m tired of consuming content all the time,” explains Walid Mohammed, a 23-year-old contributor to the creators’ economy.

This new trend is noticed even among teenagers.

“If you look at how teens spend their time on Instagram, they spend more time in DMs than they do in stories, and they spend more time in stories than they do in feed,” said Mosseri at the “20VC” interview.

The new preferences people have for sharing on social platforms redirect the thinking of software engineers towards different social media too, which is a “safe space where people can just connect and you don’t feel pressured to have a big following or a presence or be really well known,” argues Victoria Johnston, a software engineer herself.

“On a space like Geneva or any kind of group networking or chatting app, you’re just trying to connect with people with like-minded backgrounds, and you’re not trying to prove anything to anyone. You’re really just finding those niche communities that you probably wouldn’t be able to find on a major social media app,” Johnston said.

With more users migrating towards close communities DM, social platforms like Instagram are trying to keep up and are introducing paid subscriptions that offer participation and chats to exclusive groups.

Thus after about a decade of exposing their lives in public, the paradigm seems to be shifting back.

How this affects the big picture of online sharing in the long run is hard to predict. But one thing seems to be prevailing—people had their say, and it is an authentic and healthy digital experience that is an extension of their real-life friendly environments.