Are the golden days of Social Media already gone?
Younger audiences are on a bigger scale prioritizing real-life relationships, creativity and well-being and seek more niche platforms that share their identity and values.
Today we see a trend that the biggest social media platforms are getting more homogeneous and young people tend to join platforms that share their values and identity. As we know, legacy news organizations are aggressively using social media to target millennials. So if the youngsters keep moving on, what should the broadcasters do?
Log off
Gen Z lives in an 8-second world where they are looking for snackable information and pictures in a cross-channel experience. Professionals and researchers are concerned that increased use of social media may lead to a superficial media consumption and decreased depth of understanding. Young people are more online than any other generation ever, but Gen Z is reportedly using every social media app less, except for TikTok.
In the last few years, young people’s mindsets and behaviors have shifted, changing the overall social media landscape. People are becoming more aware and critical of how large social platforms are exploiting them and about what's important for them and their identities both URL and IRL. Some of the negative effects of social media use might be addiction, depression, productivity issues, and polarization.
According to new, comprehensive research from Dazed Studio, some of the cultural drivers for this development are New Youth Priorities, Big tech in trouble, and political instability. According to Dazed’s insights, their Gen Z audience has been telling them that they are prioritizing their physical and emotional health on a bigger scale and they are questioning the value and integrity of social media. Big tech companies are in trouble and try to adapt and maneuver in a quickly shifting market. E.g. Bloomberg (2023) writes that Mark Zuckerberg is pivoting away from the Metaverse and onto his next big thing: AI. Considering political instability, platforms are even under pressure from governing authorities and other important stakeholders. For example, the employees from the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (and many others worldwide) had to delete TikTok from their phones.
The rise of social media has been one of the defining features of the 21st century. From Facebook and Twitter to Instagram and Snapchat, social media has transformed the way we interact with each other and consume information. In Dazed Studio’s new report about the future of social media, they question if the golden age of social media is over.
Homogeneous platforms
The most popular social media platforms are getting more homogeneous and platforms are getting more multipurpose. Just look at how Spotify’s new design looks like TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram at the same time.
When social media first emerged, it was seen as a democratizing force that would empower individuals and connect people from all over the world. It was a platform for free expression and the exchange of ideas, and it was seen as a way to challenge established power structures.
Nowadays, many young people are turning away from social media altogether. According to a survey conducted by Pew Research Center, 44% of young people (US) ages 18 to 29 deleted the Facebook app from their phones in 2021.
Casey Newton’s newsletter, Platformer, recently wrote about BeReal losing market share in the market. The New York Times recently reported that the app BeReal was one of the top social apps for Gen Z. But now the number of people who use the app daily has dropped 61 percent from its peak, from about 15 million in October to less than 6 million in March, according to Apptopia, another analytics firm.
We live in a trust crisis where people on a bigger and bigger scale don’t believe what they are seeing. According to Vice Guide to Culture 2023 the target group “no longer put their trust in others”. And according to Trendwatching (2022) people are seeking and finding trust and bands within self-governing and altruistic groups and platforms like Reddit, or through authentic recommendations from relatable micro-creators on TikTok. Niche networks can be more intimate, developing trust through direct access to real, like-minded people and taste connoisseurs.
New user needs on socials
The decline of social media has been compounded by the rise of other forms of digital communication. Apps such as TikTok, Discord, Roblox (and Clubhouse ¯\_(ツ)_/¯?) have gained popularity among young people and they offer a more immersive and interactive experience than traditional social media platforms. For example, Clubhouse tried to create an exclusive audio-based social networking platform that allowed users to join and participate in virtual rooms to have live conversations and discussions on various topics. Just like a live radio show where the listeners also could join the conversation. In Roblox, the youngsters are socializing, being informed, playing and interacting as a digital version of themselves. It's way more immersive than just scrolling down the feed.
These alternative apps also have a more decentralized structure, which makes it harder for large corporations to control the content that is shared on their platforms. In today's fragmented media reality, people live across multiple platforms getting inputs from all over the place. Outside the mainstream social media platforms, these decentralized social media platforms are attracting more and more people because they often share their user’s interests, values, and privacy.
Dazed Studio summarizes in their report that the new priority for youth when it comes to social media is human connection, ownership, participation and creator empowerment, and safety and inclusivity. (Read more here)
Back to the Myspace way of living
Back in 2021, Hussein Keswani stated in Wired that instead of sharing more, we may go back to a more “Myspace way” of managing our online presence… The desire for private spaces will mean that most of us will share with a small audience in more secure networks, rather than for public consumption. Meanwhile, our “public” accounts - the ones that are tied to our lives as citizens and economic actors, will be cleaner, highly managed, and as neutral and inoffensive as possible.
In conclusion, the golden age of social media isn’t necessarily over, but the rise of new user needs, a quickly shifting market with new tech, and awareness among the youngsters leads to a shift in the ways young people are using platforms and in new ways that media companies could reach them in more immersive ways. If the golden age of social media is over, we might go into immersive spaces such as the metaverse where we socialize and interact in a new digital reality. Or we just join The Log Off Movement and shut down our phones and live IRL instead of URL.
Maybe the best interface actually is face to face? (I hope so ツ)
Article written by Peder Haugfos, NCE Media
