What would a world without social media look like?

What would a world without social media look like? You might think that question is easy to answer, citing historical precedent attempting to make the case that a time before social media existed should form the basis of the answer, but that would be dismissive. In the last 20 years social media has fundamentally changed our society and left a lasting impression upon all of us, even those who don't actively use it have been affected by it.  A post-social world would not look like our pre-social world.

One thing is for sure though in my mind, the golden age of social media is dead. That's not to say it will disappear overnight, far from it in fact. When we look at other forms of media like television, film, music, and magazines, they have all had periods in time we refer to as their golden age, in some cases multiple. Their golden age, defined predominantly by the peak of our consumption of that form of media lasted for a similar period of time. Despite each of these forms of media now existing post-peak they are still present, still producing content, and we still consume them in significant quantities. The power and influence that they once held however has now been put in check.

There will always be those who attempt to recreate these golden ages and push to reverse the downward trends that emerge in their consumption. Regardless of their efforts however one thing remains consistent across all media, once the point of saturation was reached, the market for each cracked and became fractured. It's not possible to remain cohesive when this critical mass is reached because there are too many competing interests that cannot be balanced. The golden age of each of these forms of media all occurred when the power and control over the industries that they dominated was concentrated in the hands of a small number of individuals.

The more people that were added into the mix the quicker the point of fracture was reached. It is much more difficult today to reach the market dominance that the heavyweights of these industries once enjoyed. That is not to say that it is not possible, TV shows like Game of Thrones managed to reach the level of exposure and ubiquity that TV shows had not experienced for decades. The greatest barrier to achieving this success from the point of view of a producer is choice, when the consumer has unlimited choice, it becomes statistically improbable that yours will be the one they make. It's easier to gain 50% of all viewers when there are only 2 channels to choose from, much harder when there are hundreds.

As a consumer the inverse is true, choice is not a problem, it is a desirability - but there is one small caveat, access to choice does not necessarily lead to a change in behaviour. Services like Spotify invest millions in the development of algorithms specifically designed to feed you content that you will like based on what you already consume whilst also attempting to expand the selection of content that you will countenance. There are over 100 million songs on Spotify but how many do you listen to? Do you listen to the same songs on repeat or do you venture outside of that bubble?

Bubbles were perhaps one of the biggest criticisms people held when it came to social media at its peak, closely followed by the concept of an echo chamber. Whilst there is some validity to these criticisms, I would personally argue that social media only ever served as a reflection of our nature it did not control it. When you think of our geographic communities prior to the internet the idea of a bubble was fundamentally entrenched in society. My parents in their youth would have known most people in the town they lived in, but they would have only interacted regularly with a subset of that congregation and for the most part that would have served as the limit of their social interaction and their social reach.

Social media did not create the bubble mentality it emerged within social media because of the behavioural patterns we follow when forming social connections. Ironically it has been social media's attempt to pop these bubbles that have caused the most recourse against social media, what they pursued in the name of growth has caused their contraction. By popping these bubbles, social networks removed the social element and made it anti-social, people who would not mix because they do not have similar interests or because they are fundamentally opposed to one another's viewpoints were forced to engage with each other, this didn't create a utopia with free exchange of ideas, instead it fostered conflict and animosity.

We see each other now laid bare, the illusion that millionaires and billionaires have achieved their status because of their intelligence has been shattered, by their own actions. Their voice reaches further than it ever has, which exposes it to those who know enough about the topics they speak on to correct them and challenge their ignorance. The big fish in a small pond has met the sharks and whales of the world and their stature has been put into perspective for all to see.

This disillusionment extends beyond those who are rich and famous, from the top to the bottom it also applies to those who seek both but have neither, they too are now put into perspective for all to see. I've noticed a changing mentality where people are now much more aware of how exposed social media makes them to the world and some have chosen not to engage with it at all, whilst others have chosen to severely limit how much they do, or how much they share through it.

I liken this this shift in mentality to what I would describe as the Great Facebook Photo Purge. There was a time when Facebook was a website for students only, you needed an academic email address with one of the institutions that was part of the network in order to sign up at all. There was a limit to who could use the platform and as such the content that people shared on it was very raw and uncensored. A few years later when Facebook expanded its registration system to allow anyone to sign up, there was a moment in time when most students on the platform went back through every album and every photo they had uploaded and started deleting everything that was negative or unflattering. This was an extension of the practice of untagging yourself in photos that others had uploaded. This purge of content came in recognition of the increased exposure that the expansion of the platform posed. Most of those students continued to use the platform but what they shared through it changed.

It's difficult to gauge the impact this death of the golden age of social media has had on the activity and engagement on these platforms as nearly all statistics provided by the platforms themselves are unreliable due to the lack of transparency in their compilation. Take daily active users as an example, this metric on its own means nothing without an explicit definition of the criteria a user needs to meet in order to be classed as active that day. Further to this a detailed breakdown of what measures are taken to determine if the user is a real person or not also needs to be included. Without both of these for context at a bare minimum the metric otherwise means nothing.

The reason I consider the golden age to have passed is not based on figures but rather the changing attitude to social media and the way it is treated by other forms of media. Taking twitter as an example there was a time when many news articles on BBC News for instance contained embedded tweets or stories would focus around comments made on social media by companies or individuals. Both of these practices have rapidly declined and this isn't limited only to the BBC it is something I have noticed on other websites too. You could make the argument that this is because Twitter is no longer a public company but I don't accept that argument as there are plenty of private companies with significant power and influence that routinely make headlines. The focus of other forms of media has decidedly changed.

You could also make the argument that Twitter has simply lost its crown to a contender but that doesn't seem to be the case either as far as I can see. The market for social media is fractured, whilst heavyweights like Facebook, Instagram, and Tiktok have considerable sway they are not treated the way Twitter was. How each of these networks in turn are treated now compared to historical attitudes of the wider array of online media outlets has also declined. Facebook, Instagram, and Tiktok have very little influence over the news cycle and the content of news articles. The only time they are of note is when someone from one of these platforms transitions into other media forms at which point these platforms are cited as the source of their fame and influence.

I feel that influencers as a concept have gone the way of models where the era of the supermodel has passed, arguably Naomi Campbell is the last Supermodel that still has a presence, but she is very much alone in that regard now, models become famous within their own circles but not beyond them. The same goes for musicians, the days of Elvis, The Beatles, Michael Jackson, and Madonna have passed, the last musician to attain that level of fame, and influence is arguably Beyoncé but again she is alone in that stratosphere. There are famous singers but they are famous in their own demographics or their own genres.

The pursuit of mega fame through social media I think has also largely been abandoned, those that still pursue fame through social media have narrowed their vision, instead focusing on the objective of curating a fanbase of loyal followers in recognition that their objective is to establish a platform that they can leverage through other media and other creative outlets, and yes through other revenue streams. There's been a resurgence of Podcasts and Patreon, OnlyFans and JustForFans, among others. It's also very telling that of those who migrated from Twitter before its decline, the two most popular alternatives are Discord and Mastodon which both do similar things but in very different ways. What they have in common however is that they are inherently server based which places the emphasis squarely on developing networks rather than the free-for-all worldwide mega town square mentality that Twitter and Facebook eventually adopted. People are returning to the original function of social media, to actually network with people you have some connection or common ground with.

I return once more to the original question that inspired this post, what would a world without social media look like? Perhaps it would be better rephrased as, "What would a world no longer dominated by social media look like?" because that's the world that is emerging now.