Why did our friends stop posting on social media?

[Onthemoooove]

I've noticed over the last year or so that my Facebook feed has changed dramatically - most friends now post rarely, if ever, and my feed is mostly full of ads, "full story in comments" articles, and AI crap. In turn, I've dramatically cut down how much I post. I now post around once a month and, a few years ago it was several times a week! The only thing useful about it is a couple of groups I'm in. Can't comment on Instagram & Twitter as I've never really used them and the likes of Tik Tok & Snapchat are alien to me (I'm old!). I then stumbled across this article which seems to sum it up perfectly.....

https://www.bbc.co.uk/worklife/article/20250722-social-media-user-changes-kyle-chayka-katty-kay-interview

Because Facebook made it very hard to see what friends are posting and it all became about advertising. I hardly post myself or read friend's posts and mostly just use it for information on local groups.

You can pay to remove ads now.

To be fair there is no real substance behind “maybe they did this maybe they did that” the stats show that social media use is declining and has been since post Covid.

I think this is such an interesting outcome to our generations fear that posting our kids on Facebook will lead to a future employer withdrawing their job offers after seeing “photos of them on the potty” this more mature, long term view that this stuff isn’t important. People just aren’t interested once they got a good look into the lives of others.

our generation are certainly the social media generation and hopefully we’ve weathered the worst of it

Oh I didn’t know this! Yes, lots still posting. I’ve noticed a few stopping during the whole covid, after that. They were posting every day what they were doing, eating, links from all Covid reports, number infected etc and I know they are embarrassed about some of that now. Covid did change a lot of stuff.

Thank you @pictoosh I have firmly put it behind me.

So much so that I changed my last name by deed poll so I am back to being utterly anonymous. The internet is forever.

Thank you for the replies. While I'd noticed a gradual decline over the years, probably as people started realising it wasn't good to overshare, theres definitely been an acceleration over the last year. This seems to have coincided with changes to Google (the AI summary appearing first, which sometimes isn't event correct!) and many posts on fb having the "link in comments" thing where you discover the story isn't as sensational as the headline suggests! I've also noticed some friends now only posting on their stories, presumably because it's temporary. I don't tend to look at them as I believe they get notified that you looked but didn't react! I actually like the permanent record of the newsfeed as I use it like a diary so only post things I want to see in the future without cringing! I will be sad if Facebook goes altogether as it's an easy way of staying in touch with certain distant friends and relatives but would hope it would mean less time is wasted online. However, as suggested in the article, I very much doubt that will be the case!