Death of social media?

My 19 year old dd had no social media. She hates it.

She uses WhatsApp but l don’t know if that counts.

“Join me as I scrape some dried old mashed potato off the corner of the carpet” #ad #affiliate

What I hate most is that people genuinely think they’re experts on stuff they just googled, and if you challenge them you’re a hater.

Interesting. As the author of the article says, there's something kind of pleasing and heartening about the idea that people are just drifting away from socia media platforms in spite of ever more money and effort being poured into making them addictive and lucrative to sell access to our attention. The idea that after years of moral and social panic about it, society might be heading towards saying 'Yeah... no thanks, it's actually a bit rubbish' rather than having to force themselves to give it up. Poor old millionaire/ billionaire tech bros potentially made to feel irrelevant and uncool

Now if only MN could make itself similarly boring I might get more done...

Yes, it will pass of course and something even worse may come up.

Interestingly my 20 year old DD told me she deleted her instagram account, though I’d hardy call her a heavy user. Then she found out she missed some important info about a society she’s a member of at uni! So she’s had to reload it.
I don’t use anything other than FB (though some TikTok gets repeated on there), I do watch tutorials on YouTube but have never posted anything, though I might start a YouTube channel in a while to document a year abroad.

Got rid of it all. X was poison after Elon took it over, tried blsky, that was a weird place. Facebook long gone.
I have friends from over the world and some childhood friends who on facebook were quite active in keeping in touch which was lovely. When I deleted facebook, I let everyone know in advance that was leaving and left my email address to keep in touch. Not one person has got in touch in a year! Lol. Just back to Christmas cards. I guess I smell!

Yep, I deleted Instagram and Facebook and it's great. Just need to use Mumsnet less

Yep, I've uninstalled Instagram and Facebook on my phone. It wasn't that I was really spending too much time on them - I spend wayyyyy more time on MN! It was that I was fed up with the endless adverts, recommendations and AI drivel. I don't miss them at all.

I use social media everyday and so do most people I know, even if it's just to browse, send messages or catch up with local events.

I also run my business on social media and my pages are as busy as ever, if not busier in some ways.

I don't think you'll get a very balanced view on here as MN in general is very "anti" social media (despite many people spending hours a day on here!).

There always has been and always will be alternative media. Twitter was important during the Arab Spring for example because people were using it to organise and mobilise but those days are long behind it. It's merely a tool for right wing mobilisation now.

I listen to quite a few podcasts about American Politics and came across this organised by Prof Scott Galloway

https://www.resistandunsubscribe.com/

His opinion is that the only thing that influences Trump's decison making is a wobble in the marktets. He's suggesting that Americans unsubscribe from most of their online subscriptions as a means to protest against the current adminstrations actions. Scott says it doesn't have to be a permanet unsubscription, just for one month will make a difference.

He's identified the 7 companies who have provided Trump with financial support and who would be the ones most likely to lean on Trump to change course if they saw their stock value fall. Meta is one of the big 7- so it'll be interesting to see if his campaign gains momentum

I remember when I first joined facebook there were a lot of the old-style memes that often involved cats (and were actually funny - my gen alpha daughter was showing me memes the other day that didn't even make sense).

I still have my facebook but never use it - for years I've been meaning to download all my photos off it and and delete it as I never actually use it - and the feed is just absolute garbage. I still have Instagram but rarely use it and yes when I scroll it I find myself annoyed and irritated. The way people dey to drive engagement like have a video that you need to hunt for part 2 and it turns out it was three weeks ago and there isn't actually a part two - who can be fucked with that any more. Even the 'backlash' against influencers is being driven by other influencers. Its so tedious. Its also an absolute time suck.

I'm a member of a forum that I've been on since I was about 19 in all its various guises and the slow-ish moving conversation style with a core group of members is still the best 'social media' format.

I have a very targeted Linked-In that I use purely to connect with my specific sector. I ignore all the ‘brand building’ crap and have notifications turned off.

I come on MN most days for 10-20 mins.

Thats it.

Came off Facebook 12 years ago. All the endless photos of peoples kids and complete disregard for privacy started to freak me out.

Hated Twitter/X from the outset and joined then left within a year (years ago). Childish, toxic commentary that added nothing to my life.

I can’t imagine any reason I’d want to use Instagram.

When I watch people scrolling TikTok and Insta on their phones on my commute it seems so weird. Watching the eye and hand movements - scroll, pause, scroll, pause. Just so, so odd.

I honestly think all the ‘we use social media to connect with each other’ stuff is a thing most people tell themselves that is not really true. People are wasting time - hours and hours of life - looking at screens and getting sucked into addictive behaviour that stops them using their amazing brains to do so many other useful, wonderful things they could be doing. It makes me angry for young people. I really do believe this has become harmful to society.

OK I admit I'm older, not that it matters.... I only use FB to follow reports from the US. I follow a guy called Aaron Parnas, and another satirical, cynical and from the hip observer of things as they are going on now Alex Scuby. I am brushing up my French so I use it to watch certain pages from France obv in French! And I follow different pages depending on where I'm going on a trip abroad. I don't use FB to post my photos or keep in touch with anyone. There's whatsapp for that.

No insta, tik tok, X or anything else.

I have an insta account but dont use it. I used to have twitter but deleted it when it really turned nasty on there. I have never had a tiktok account. The only one I really use is facebook and that is locked down strictly to family and friends and has the highest security settings on it. I use facebook a lot but if it went, I would have to email or WhatsApp family more with photos etc.....

I've discovered on my FB app there's a button that just shows me stuff from my friends. It has its uses but it's not what it was.

I disagree.

In the past couple of weeks what is happening in Meneapolis, Iran and with the Eipstein files have reminded how important it is to have alternative platforms where people can share content that the mainstream media are too cowardly or to compromised to cover.

For all it the issues with its current owner if it was not for X many of these stories would be buried.

Yeah, I think people will collectively come to the conclusion that the downsides outweigh the upsides and that social media has fallen prey to Enshittification.

It’s not social media anymore. It’s endless propaganda and AI slop.

I’ve kept my Facebook account as the local groups can be useful and sometimes old posts pop up on my memories. They were great. Updates from actual friends. Nice comments. Sometimes some banter. They had a good product that enhanced social interactions and have completely trashed it.

I use Facebook for local groups but never post anything personal on it, in fact I only have a couple of friends who still use it regularly. I've never had Instagram or tik tok etc and even pick my posts carefully on here, there's soon many full of crap stories!!

The only thing I want to use FB for now is local groups, so I deleted my proper account and set up a new one with no picture and no friends just for that. But even so, as nobody really uses it anymore it's of limited value; I'm trying to find good tradespeople at the moment but whereas once you'd have loads of people recommending people they'd used, now it's just companies advertising themselves. Which I could find by googling. At least I still see people complaining about fireworks, roadworks and the new Aldi. Needless to say, I don't waste much time on it anymore! Now I'm just here instead...

@birdysong If it wasn’t for MN I’d never be online 🙈

I use it for what it was intended for (initially) looking at friends pics and vice verse. Never see any influencers or anything that would make me feel like shit so I enjoy it still