INTRODUCTION
I grabbed my phone the other day to check Facebook. I just wanted to know how my friends' move had gone. What I actually got was ad after ad on things I didn't need, on the next scroll I got a video of a stranger yelling at people in their car, and a post from someone I went to school with in 2004 telling me everyone else is wrong about everything.
Didn’t find the post about my friend moving house.
I then decided that social media stopped being social. Not in a dramatic way that everything exploded. It was like when a restaurant stops being excellent, and the quality goes down. Smaller portions, worse service, more expensive, and the quality of the food is dropping. But still you go there until one day you ask yourself why when you don't enjoy going there anymore.
It has been said that social media is “dying.” That implies a process. This thing is already gone. What we’re using now is something else entirely.
The apps are still there. The logos haven't really changed much. But the feeling did. The reason you open them did. More importantly, the reason you close them usually in under five minutes, very irritated for no clear reason - definitely did.
We didn’t lose connection because people stopped wanting it. We lost it because the connection isn’t very profitable. Attention is.
And that swap changed everything.
THE VERSION WE MISS AND WHY IT WASN’T ACTUALLY THAT GREAT
Everyone talks about the “good old days” of social media as if it were a magical era. Chronological feeds. Friends posting dumb stuff. When we had real photos and the filtered ones, I didn't recognise you anymore.
It was good to know why you were seeing what you were seeing. If your friend posted, you actually saw it when it was posted, but now a pattern in a machine decides what appears on your feed based on what you may have seen in the past.
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here; we had our fair share of junk. Pointless games, endless requests, status updates that said what people were having for breakfast. It wasn’t magical; it was very predictable.
It mattered more than we realized.
It was when the stories stopped being about who you knew and your friends that kept you scrolling; things shifted. Quietly. Then all at once.
You didn’t opt into that change. Nobody discussed it just one day, your friend’s engagement was never made to your feed, and a headline that fuels rage from a page you never followed was suddenly showing all over your feed.
That’s when it started.
HOW IT ACTUALLY BROKE
Then the ads started and that change social media.
Once platforms realized users were the customers, the rules changed. Your relationships became secondary. Your reactions became the product.
You could feel the shift if you paid attention. The platforms don’t reward normalness. They reward intensity. Calm posts dont excite. Mild opinions disappear. Anything that makes people argue, or spiral? That gets boosted.
Influencers didn’t help the situation, but they weren’t the root problem. You could say they were a symptom. When your attention turns into currency, human nature says we will chase it everybody always wants more. When authenticity starts paying rent, it stops being authentic. It’s not a moral failing it’s what economics does.
Then the weird stuff started. Posts randomly showing up. Your accounts “underperforming.” Businesses having to pay for ads to reach people who already said, “Yes, I want to see this.” all without explanation and no transparency. Vibes and analytics dashboards that never quite tell you the truth.
Then we all became data which didnt shock. It was enevitable. The trust was gone we all became a number, but we all stayed. This wasn’t about community. It was about extraction.
After that, trust didn’t collapse dramatically. It leaked out slowly. People stayed, but they stopped believing.
WHAT WE’RE ACTUALLY USING NOW
Do you still call them social platforms? You can if you want but let’s be honest about what they’ve become.
Facebook feels like trip through your grand parents attic just digitally. A place people return to to find a bargain. Marketplace is the only thing keep a lot of users coming back, and even that feels like going through someone else’s rubbish.
Instagram looks good, but it feels empty. Scroll long enough and you realize you’re mostly watching ads for stuff you think you want but will never use your friends show up occasionally, everything else you see is shopping, posing, and people teaching you self help.
Twitter - or whatever we’re calling it this week isn’t a conversation space. It’s a performance stage. Nobody’s listening. Everyone’s broadcasting. The loudest, the brightest the most controversial take wins, not the smartest ones. It’s exhausting in a very specific way.
TikTok is honest about one thing: it’s not about your friends. It never was. It’s pure algorithm. Entertainment first, people second. And to its credit, it doesn’t really pretend otherwise.
Not one of platforms are designed for talking to each other. They’re designed for consumption to keep you scrolling and keep you on the site longer.
That’s not being social. That’s a feed.
WHERE REAL CONNECTION WENT
Conections are not being talked about enough; connections didn’t vanish. they relocated.
Group chats not really a place to build a brand where half the messages are dumb memes or voice notes sent while walking the dog or eating breakfast.
Discord servers a place where people remember each other’s usernames and remember past conversations. Not followers.
Forums and niche communities where shared interest matters more than reach nobody is trying to go viral, as that would ruin the space.
Even phone calls are creeping back. Which is wild. A few years ago, calling someone calling you felt intrusive and a bit weird. Now it feels like a breath of fresh air people actually want to talk instead of adding to the noise.
There are apps trying to get back to this. Some are sincere. Some will inevitably ruin themselves chasing scale. That cycle seems unavoidable and human nature.
People didn’t stop wanting to connect it was just being looked for in places designed to monetize loneliness.
WHY WE KEEP PRETENDING EVERYTHING’S GOOD
A lot of people know something’s wrong. You can feel it by how quickly you close the app after opening it. That immediate, “Why am I here?” feeling.
So why stay?
Part of it is habit part of it is the fear of missing out on something that happened. Part of it is the time already sunk in. Years of photos. Posts. Proof you existed. Walking away feels like deleting part of your life, even if you never look at it.
If your in business it’s even worse trying to leave it isnt really an option. The platforms know that you need a social presence these days. They change there rules change constantly, always in their favor never in yours. It’s not a partnership. It’s leverage.
A simple reason is all of these systems were built to be sticky. Intermittent rewards. Endless novelty. Just enough small wins to keep you checking.
It doesn’t feel good anymore. But it feels familiar. And that’s hard to give up.
Honestly, that might be the most depressing part.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT
Social media isn’t going vanish there is too much money in the industry now. It just needs to stop pretending to be something it isn’t.
Entertainment platforms will be fully into entertainment. Shopping platforms hopefully will stop hiding behind “community.” The language needs to change, i doubt the mechanics will.
And that’s fine.
The mistake was expecting billion-dollar ad machines to support genuine human connection in the first place. That expectation was always a little naïve.
Real connection and proper conversation don’t scale well. It’s inefficient. It’s quiet. It doesn’t generate clean metrics, it doesn't create controversy, which the platforms love. Which is exactly why it still feels good.
The death of connection online may not be dead just yet or maybe it’s just the end of confusing noise with intimacy.
Ask yourself one thing - honestly.
Think back to the last time you had a real, proper conversation on a social platform? Not just something you commented on and had an argument with the haters of the world. Not a reply crafted for strangers. A back-and-forth that actually mattered.
If you’re struggling to answer, that’s not because you’re broken.
It’s because the place you’re looking at stopped being built a long time ago.
Social media didn’t fail. It just showed us what it was really for.