Death of the Status Update: Why 55% of Americans Stopped Posting on Social Media

Back in 2005-ish era, I helped reboot a college club (I was the coach/advisor).

We started out using forum software to co-ordinate what we were doing but eventually (2008-ish) switched to Facebook as the president of the club pointed out "Alex, everyone is already on Facebook and the notifications from us are in the middle of the notifications for when the next party is" etc.

Fast forward to today and the club is rebooting again. I asked the current club president "What social network is everyone on these days?" His response: "Really there is no one place where everyone goes anymore." I then asked him how clubs share their info etc and he says "The bulletin board at the student center?"

While social media definitely has its downsides (echo chambers, extremism etc) I do feel like it's a bit of a net loss to not have a "commons". That model makes it super easy to start up new organizations, get the word out etc.

Part of me hopes that we got back to the late 1990s dedicated websites/forums. That seems to be the Discord model but let's see.

I noticed last year that FB did some change to their recommendations engine, that they’ll show posts by random people based things you’ve searched. A friend was diagnosed with cancer last year, I searched extensively, and now I’m exclusively getting posts from random people with cancer on my feed.

Back to 2015, I stopped posting on Facebook when I noticed that it’s no longer about connecting with my friends, but a never ending stream of boring posts from groups and people that I don’t know or care to follow.

All my “social” life just moved to direct communication in WhatsApp (meta owned as well)

I've noticed that a lot of my friends switched from text based status updates (Facebook) to image based status updates (Instagram stories). Personally, I got tired of going on Facebook because it was all rage baiting political stuff, and that was all from friends, not even ads.

To keep people engaged, social media platforms have shifted from showing you content from people you know to prioritizing viral content. The algorithms know viral content offers an endless stream of entertainment that keeps people scrolling longer.

Emotions experienced chart - that is insightful and matches my anecdata.

I think you get bad emotions when you have high expectations about social media and it is your main source of social life. Where positive happen when you have low expectations about social media and it is just addon to your life.

Example of gaps is being lonely, low self esteem, low self worth, no work network, no business network. So you stay glued to FB to build your life, to keep online friends, because you may have not many in life. Or you have no real work network so you need to stay current on LI because your next job is there.

This is an ad for Incogni

Twitter and Reddit went hostile to their users in 2023 with their respective API and other changes. A small percentage of leaders sought out newer and better options and this time the followers stayed where they were, not wanting to start over again. But everyone talks about hating social media now and they're going slowly inactive. It's the most expected outcome.

We're all in small groups on discord or in signal now. FB feed is just not the best medium for keeping up with friends.

Not sure if I see a bad thing in this. I'd like too know what old friends are currently up to and checking their social media has been a way to do so during the golden age of facebook.

Lately I feel more value in connecting with them personally, talking and letting them now, that I am still interested in what's going on for them.

It seems like so much of social media is just individuals shouting into the void.

Social media mostly polarise people (both women and men, in different ways) and generally speaking what you post will be used against you at some point.

So yeah, no wonder that social media is dying. People are just catching up to the fact that the best way not to lose is to just not play the game.

Strava is now the preferred app in my social network. And no "status update" is necessary as it does that automatically.

url: https://www.pcmag.com/news/death-of-the-status-update-why-55...

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