Why did our friends stop posting on social media? | BBC Global

I do think social media has changed a lot. The platforms have deprioritized the content from normal people and these kind of mundane breakfast posts. And I actually surveyed a lot of people when I was writing this piece and they were telling me that what they really felt repelled by was the kind of chaos that was happening in their feeds. They were competing against news headlines, professionalized influencer content, and now AI generated text and images and video. the medium has gotten higher brow and higher production value and normal people just can't necessarily keep up with that. So, it just didn't feel like a conducive space to putting yourself out there anymore. It just didn't make sense to post your own life. So, Kyle, you've written this piece in the New Yorker about this significant change that social media seems to be going through. I think a lot of us have seen it. I mean, you know, looking at my feeds. Um, they're full of ads. They're full of lovely houses I will never buy in places of the world I'll probably never even visit, let alone live in. But the last time I saw a post from a friend. Wow. I mean, I'm literally trying to think when was the last time I saw a post from a friend. And and so what does that mean for the future of these platforms? If if we we we kind of light the houses, but we might it it just means we're our reason for going there is totally different from what it was even a couple of years ago, >> right? I think social media has become less social like it's more about just consuming this kind of highly commodified content and it's more about lifestyle aspiration or you know things that you are moving toward in your own life not just like what's going on around you and how are you relating to your friends and family. I mean to me that kind of removes the purpose of social media like the if the platforms are losing their grip on people's normal lives and normal people don't feel the incentive to post anymore then social media becomes just like I don't know like television commercial yes exactly and so that's less interesting like that what we're left with then is the brand advertising and the fast fashion and the houses and the hotel advertisements and that's just not the same kind of organic, highly textured stuff that we were used to. >> And are they losing people because of this? I mean, these are not dummies, the people that run these companies, they have the most sophisticated kind of brand marketing algorithms to hook us in. So, are they what are they how what's their response to this? Or are they just happy that there's more advertising and so they're making more advertising revenue? Yeah, I think their main clients are the advertisers and so as long as we the users are still engaging, their business model still works and I think they're also betting that the human generated content will be replaced gradually with AI generated content and you see meta already kind of moving the Facebook feed and the Instagram feed toward that kind of computerenerated stuff which is obviously infinite and cheap uh but also meaningless in my opinion. does. But do you do you think Kyle it will mean that if it's not social, if it's not that sort of um way of staying connected with your friends and family that it used to be? Do you think there's a chance that they're going to see a significant drop off of all the people like us who actually went there to see where our friends were going on holiday or what they had for breakfast or >> I think so. I mean, I think there is a slow decline. I know of one study recently that found fewer people are actually posting on Tik Tok. Um, but what these platforms have found, I think Instagram in particular, is that our personal sharing is moving more toward direct messages and kind of one-to-one conversations with our friends. We actually do need an online social network and the social networks that we have now don't really want to play that role. So, I think there will be new spaces and maybe even new apps that emerge to serve that need. Whether that's like an expanded WhatsApp or a better management system for all your friends group chats. I think we're just moving into a more private, more intimate way of connecting online. >> Do you think we maybe this is a bit meta and put on your psychologist's hat for me, >> please? >> Go on, get the psych get the couch out. Um do you think we there was a whole feeling amongst my generation and I have kids who um are kind of in their in their 20s and teens and it will always struck my generation that wow these kids don't care about privacy. they're happy to put anything out there that it wasn't a problem. And I'm just wondering actually if we were wrong and they tasted this world where everything was put out there in public and now they're thinking actually, you know what, no, I'd rather my groups were more intimate and curated and actually my friends as opposed to the whole world knowing what I had for breakfast. >> Yeah, I think we kind of learned the downside of broadcasting your private life online over the course of the 2010s. And you could see that with public shaming or kind of viral embarrassments that happen to people. So the I kind of think the social contract of social media has changed. Like the deal is if you put stuff out there, if you put out content, you could get this massive audience. But that becomes like a vicious cycle that becomes your entire life. So unless you're literally trying to become an influencer or a creator or like a professional internet poster, the deal doesn't seem so good anymore. like the the downsides of posting are too great and the advantages are not good enough and so you might as well just text your friends >> and I do how does this impact the conversation around phones and kids and schools and I had a conversation with Jonathan height who's obviously done a lot of work on this on trying to get phones out of schools do you think this if the trend you have are spotting turns out to be a kind of a a significant wave and a sign you call it posting zero if that's what we're kind of moving towards. Does it actually make it easier, do you think, to break that phone and device addiction for kids? >> It's a good question. I mean, I do think we've passed peak social media in a way. But then I I don't think that removes the 24/7 digital conversation that people are having anyway. It's just like the the conversation and the action moves away from the public channels into these group chats into DMs or a more ephemeral platform like Snapchat. Uh so like the the addictive capacity of the phone is still there. The distraction is certainly still there, but I think there's less of this public nature of it. Like I think it is a little bit better that we've moved out of the public sphere and have removed that risk of just getting totally exposed to the entire world and going viral for the wrong reasons. But you know, we're still texting each other all day. We're still consuming memes. We're still getting distracted by feeds. >> Well, throw it forward, Kyle, to us. Okay, you study this. If you if I said to you, okay, what are we going to be looking at on our phones in five years time or uh three years time even? How different would it be? our interaction with our phones and our devices and this social component. >> I think it'll be even more like television. I mean, I think if we see the way things are going, it's a lot of professionalized media. It's a lot of passively watching stuff. And we kind of see this merging today of YouTube and Tik Tok and Netflix into just an unholy combination of audio and video and algorithmic feed. So if I had to predict, I think we're moving more in that direction and the conversation and social aspect will be in text messages or will, you know, move almost I I I think it might move more into real life. Actually, I do think this this peak social media has created more of a desire for in-person interaction and has reminded us of the value of actually sharing things in real life. Uh so that that makes me a little bit hopeful. Do do you think we'll get to a kind of posting zero world where not companies and influencers and professionals, but people like you and I just are not posting anymore? >> I think so. I mean, I think it's coming sooner than we expect just because there's no incentive. Like, why why share your thoughts like that? Why post your selfies or post your breakfast if you don't get attention for it? you can't reach your friends and you're just competing with all of this, you know, remote abstracted garbage out there. >> Yeah. I mean, I can I see I have a 19-year-old daughter and she has basically deleted her social media apps, I think, apart from Pinterest cuz she likes also looking at, you know, nice houses and nice clothes, but she doesn't and decor for her bedroom, but she doesn't post. And she actually recently took a whole week off her phone. She went up and stayed in Scotland and left her phone behind in London and didn't use it at all. And I asked her if she missed it, if she missed posting or seeing her friends post and she said not at all. And if she I don't know if she's a canary in the coal mine, but I sort of feel she is that she was born in 2006 and and now she and her friends are are sort of done with it, >> right? Like maybe social media was this uh aberration in a way or like a detour and this idea that every normal person should share their life in public was kind of flawed from the beginning. And we're now waking up from that a little bit and seeing the damage that it's wrought and moving on a little bit with our habits. >> Um Kyle, thank you. Kyle Shaker, thank you very much for joining me. >> Thank you.