In 2024, social media use is worse than ever

Being online has never been more stressful than in 2024. While it’s been clear for some time that monetization has turned social media into a different beast, this year in particular felt like a turning point. Faced with endless streams of content designed to appeal to viewers, shoppable ads at every turn, artificial intelligence and the relentless opinions of strangers, it recently struck me that despite my regular use of these apps, I don’t actually enjoy them. None of them anymore.

Take Instagram. I open the app and am greeted by an advertisement for toilets. I start scrolling. Between each of the top three posts at the top of my feed is a different ad: underwear, comfy squat pants, and shoes from a brand selling items that appear to have been shipped from AliExpress at a premium price. Then, thankfully, a couple of memes came back. I fire one to five of my friends in a seemingly obligatory manner. Next, another ad, and then a bunch of seemingly untargeted reels from accounts I don’t even follow. Minutes pass before I encounter a post by someone I know in real life. Oh yeah, it’s time to turn off suggested posts again, something I have to do every 30 days or else my feed will be filled with random crap.

But before I have a chance to do so, I’m distracted by the sight of a watching cat Grinch. Then through a reel of a man carrying a small Chihuahua in his coat pocket. Curiosity got the better of me and I opened the comments, where people angrily wrote that the dog must be choking. Oh no. I scrolled to the next clip, a video I’d seen many times before of Dick walking around in pants. Below, everyone is arguing about whether it’s cruel to wear pants on a hen. Is it so? Next, a video of a girl doing her makeup, with the guys commenting that this should be considered catfishing. Deep sigh. I realized that 30 minutes had passed and somehow closed Instagram, now in a worse mood than when I opened it. I’ll forcefully come back in an hour or so, rinse and repeat.

It’s not just an Instagram problem. On TikTok (which Pretty soon), I’ve found the For You page is pretty good in terms of content and the presence of toxic commenters is minimal, but every other post is either sponsored or sold a product from the TikTok store. It’s very easy to get caught up in constant scrolling. I often avoid opening the app at all simply because I know I’ll be trapped there longer than I want, watching videos about nothing made by people I don’t know and will never know. But this still happens more frequently than I’d like to admit.

These days, it feels like every online gathering place is so crowded with content vying for our attention — and successfully grabbing our attention — or trying to sell us something that there’s hardly any room for the “social” element of social media. Instead, we are pushed into separate corners to stare at the glowing boxes in our hands alone.

appropriately, At the end of November, it announced that its Word of the Year for 2024 is “brain rot,” a term for the supposed outcome of countless hours spent online consuming stupid things. Perfectly suited for Australia We chose “enshittification,” which describes how the platforms and products we love are destroyed over time as the companies behind them pursue profits. (And it was Word of the Year 2023). Social media platforms were theoretically designed around ideas of friendship and connection, but what happens on them today couldn’t seem further from real human interaction.

Facebook – if you have an account – may be the place to go if you want truly I wanted to see updates from family and other people I know IRL, but its UI became so cluttered with recommended rollers and products that it seemed unusable. Twitter, where it was once fun to keep up with live discourse about major or mass events, is no more, and X, its new form under Elon Musk, is here. .

On the other hand, Threads, an offshoot of Instagram and Meta’s answer to Twitter/X, It quickly became a hotspot for sharing and copy-paste bait, which is a very bad problem . Clearly the Threads team has been “getting a grip on it,” but I still can’t scroll through my For You feed without seeing dozens of posts that are either just regurgitated memes passed off as original ideas, or questions for the fans made with the intention of moving… The bowl. Otherwise, the same feed is dominated by viral videos that are stolen from other creators without credit and pop culture commentary that almost always turns sexist and sexist. I often walk away from the threads and feel the need to scream out into a field.

Topics don’t have direct messages, which means all conversations are public. He – she About searchable topics in November, but these topic pages are still full of bait-and-switch style posts, just more topic-specific versions. This means that until now it has been very difficult to find communities to connect with authentically. This all seems very impersonal.

It doesn’t help that the threads’ follow feed is currently not the default view and there is no way to change that (). And at the end of the day, it is That doesn’t include all that many people I already know, especially outside of the media industry. The same goes for various social networks like Mastodon and Bluesky, which are much less populated but have a more harmonious character. Visiting these platforms feels like walking into a room full of people who know each other well, and realizing you’re the odd one out. But at least Bluesky and Mastodon aren’t poorly disguised shopping experiences. (The topics are not current either, however ).

Maybe it’s all down to fatigue in the age of overconsumption, but lately I’ve found myself wanting a place online that feels both welcoming and fun at the same time. Humans. I’m sure I’m not alone. In recent years, we’ve seen the rise of alternative social apps like BeReal and Hive and apps reminiscent of Myspace like SpaceHey and all of which aim to bring personality and interpersonal connection back to social media. But none have been able to decipher lasting mainstream adoption. Discord and even Reddit address more or less the same personal needs, yet they have more in common with social media chat rooms and forums than with the sites that emerged during social media’s heyday.

Meanwhile, Meta is increasingly pushing AI across its applications. Just this summer, we acquired chatbot maker, AI Studio, which Meta describes as not only a way for users to create AI personas, but also for “content creators to build AI as an extension of themselves to reach more fans.” Instead of talking to your real friends or making new friends over common interests, you can deepen your social connection with celebrities, influencers, and fictional characters by chatting with their AI versions. Or choose from the many AI-powered girlfriends you can now find in your direct message list. I’m afraid we’ve completely lost the plot.

I’ve started going back to Tumblr here and there, just to see a less chaotic, more organized feed and enjoy the reminder of how fun customization is. A few friends mentioned that they were doing the same thing. But given the platform And for her It’s not an online oasis either. As if on cue, I recently received a During my evening commute, which seemed oddly appropriate: “We’re not getting better. The rest of the Internet is getting worse.”