In 2024, the use of social media is worse than ever

It’s never been more boring to be online than in 2024. While it’s been clear for some time that money has turned social media into a different beast, this year in particular seemed like a wild one. Faced with the endless streams of content designed to attract viewers, the ever-expanding ads, the AI ​​and the unwavering opinions of visitors, it recently struck me that even though I love using these apps, I’m not enjoying them. each of them again.

Take Instagram. I open the app and am greeted with an ad for bidets. I start wiping. Between the first three columns at the top of my feed there are different products: underwear, friendly jorts, shoes from products that look like they have been downloaded from AliExpress for a price. So, luckily, two memes back to back. I high five my funny friends in a way that I feel is important. After that, another ad, then a bunch of seemingly untargeted Reels from accounts I don’t follow. Minutes pass before I come across the text of someone I know in real life. Well, it’s time to turn off the suggested posts again, which I have to do every 30 days or my feed will be full of crap.

But before I get a chance to do that, I get distracted by a Reel of a cat watching The Grinch. Then there’s the Reel of the guy with the little chihuahua in his coat pocket. Curiosity catches me and I open the comments, where people write angrily that the dog must be dying. Oh no. I’m going to the next Reel, a video I’ve seen countless times of a rooster marching in his pants. Below, everyone is arguing about whether it’s cruel to wear chicken pants. Is that so? Then, a video of a girl doing her makeup, while the men say that this should be considered fishy. A deep sigh. I realize that 30 minutes have somehow passed and I closed Instagram, now I’m worse than when I opened it. I’ll come back in an hour or so, rinse and repeat.

It’s not just Instagram’s problem. On TikTok (which recently), the For You site has made me satisfied and the presence of commenters on poison is limited, but any other articles are sponsored or sold in the TikTok Shop. And it’s easy to get a permanent roll. I usually avoid opening the app because I know I’ll be spending more time than I want to, watching random videos made by people I don’t know and never will. But it happens more often than I care to admit.

These days, it seems like every social networking site on the Internet is filled with content that is competing for — and successfully grabbing — our attention or trying to sell us something that doesn’t have a social “social” place. Instead, we are pushed into different corners to look at the light boxes in our hands only.

Accordingly, announced at the end of November that his Word of the Year for 2024 is “brain rot,” a term that describes what it takes to spend countless hours on the Internet eating stupid things. That’s right, Australian he chose “enshittification,” which describes how the platforms and products we love are destroyed over time as the companies behind them chase profits. (It was also ‘s 2023 Word of the Year). Social networking sites were built around the idea of ​​friendship and communication, but today’s trends are no longer about real human interaction.

Facebook – if you have an account – could be your go-to place actually I wanted to see updates from family and other people you know IRL, but its UI is filled with official Reels and things that feel like they’re not being used. Twitter, where it was once fun to have news about major events or fandom events, is no longer there, and X, its new form under Elon Musk, is .

On the other hand, Threads, a branch of Instagram and Meta’s answer to Twitter / X, and it soon became a copy-paste dating site, a very bad problem . The Threads team has apparently been “working to improve,” yet I can’t get past my For You feed without seeing a dozen or so posts that probably just turn into original ideas, or questions for the masses. which are made for the purpose of stirring the pot. This feed is dominated by videos ripped from other creators without credit and pop culture commentary that is often sex- and gender-sensitive. I often leave Threads feeling the need to scream in the field.

Threads do not have DMs, meaning all discussions are held in public. They on topics that may not be searched for in November, but the topic pages are often full of bait articles, more and more versions. This means that it has been very difficult to find areas to cooperate with. It all feels inhuman.

It doesn’t help that the next Threads feed is currently not true and there is no way to change it (). And finally, that it doesn’t include many people I know, especially outside of the media industry. The same goes for social networking sites like Mastodon and Bluesky, which are very small but have a few ideas. Social media is like walking into a room full of people who know each other, and realizing you’re the odd one out. But at least Bluesky or Mastodon aren’t covered in good deals. (Not at the moment, though, but ).

Maybe it all boils down to being too tired during a binge, but lately I’ve been longing for places on the internet that are fun and interesting. a person. I hope I’m not alone. In recent years, we’ve seen other social networking apps come up like BeReal, Hive and the Myspace-reminiscent SpaceHey and both aim to bring humanity and connection back to social media. But no one broke the rules to be taken for a long time. Discord and even Reddit to some extent cater to one-to-one needs, but they share more with social media and forums than with sites that started during gaming.

Meanwhile, Meta is heavily pushing AI across its apps. This summer we found a chatbot developer, AI Studio, which Meta said is not only a way for users to create AI characters, but “creators to create AI as their extension to reach more fans.” Instead of talking to your real friends or innovating on your favorite hobbies, you can grow your relationship with celebrities, influencers and fictional characters by interacting with their AI models. Or, choose from several AI girls that you can now find in your DMs list. We’ve lost the plot, I’m afraid.

I’ve started diving into Tumblr here and there, just to see a little bit of food, to keep it simple and to have fun remembering how fun it can be. Several of his friends have said that they have been doing the same. But because of the platform it’s his it’s not exactly a social network. As if I knew, he recently sent me a in my evening notes that I felt must be the best: “We’ve never been better. The Internet just got better.”