Social media is dying

December 1, 2025

For nearly two decades, social media has shaped how we communicate. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter (now X), Instagram, and TikTok have become digital town squares where you can consume information and express yourself. Social media is responsible for influencing everything from politics to pop culture. In recent years, it’s clear that social media as we know it is dying. It will not disappear overnight, but social media is undeniably undergoing a profound transformation which suggests its golden age may be behind us.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, social media platforms were experimental tools designed to make the internet more interactive and community driven. One of the earliest examples was Six Degrees, launched in 1997, which allowed users to create profiles and connect with others—laying the groundwork for what we now recognise as social networking. By 2002, Friendster expanded on this idea, helping people meet through mutual connections and shared interests. Around the same time, LiveJournal emerged as a space for blogging and forming communities around personal passions and niche topics. While many people born after the 1980s may not recognise these names, these platforms were simple yet powerful. They gave users the basic digital tools to communicate, share ideas, and build relationships around hobbies and interests.

When MySpace launched in 2003, it revolutionised the way people interacted online. For the first time, users could fully personalise their profiles using HTML, allowing them to change backgrounds, customise layouts and even embed music. It wasn’t just a social platform; it was a creative space. People spent hours, even weeks, crafting their pages to reflect their personalities. Your profile felt truly yours. You had a digital space that belonged to you, even if you didn’t own a website.

Importantly, early social media platforms like MySpace didn’t just connect individuals; they nurtured communities and supported grassroots culture. The Arctic Monkeys got signed because fans created a MySpace page and uploaded demos.

Early versions of Facebook (2004) and Instagram (2010) embraced simplicity. Feeds showed posts from friends in chronological order, and Instagram focused on filtered photos and creative sharing through hashtags. Monetisation was minimal, as the platforms had few ads and collected little user data, making them feel more like a community than a marketplace.

Facebook’s introduction of EdgeRank marked a shift from chronological feeds to engagement-driven algorithms, prioritising posts with more likes, comments, and shares. As machine learning advanced, content became deeply personalised, and other platforms, like Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram, quickly followed suit. When Facebook went public in 2012 and Twitter in 2013, investor interests began to shape platform priorities. Connecting with friends or showcasing creative work took a backseat to maximising engagement and ad revenue.

As social media platforms evolved, the race for attention intensified. Real friends were buried beneath endless content, and features like Instagram Stories—brief, 24-hour snapshots—became fleeting glimpses in a noisy feed.

Then came the short-form video boom. TikTok perfected the model, and every platform followed, flooding feeds with peak moments—luxury vacations, idealised bodies, flashy brands, and exaggerated personalities. The result? A For You page packed with algorithmic clutter: OnlyFans promos, dubious get-rich-quick schemes, and AI-generated junk. What was once social is now saturated with junk.

Facebook’s parent company, Meta, says its own internal data revealed something pretty damning that confirms everything that’s going on. Only 17% of what you see on Facebook comes from friends. On Instagram, it’s even worse, just 7%. Everything else is the algorithm’s best guess at what will keep your thumb moving. Zuckerberg admitted it is not about friends anymore; “it’s about the entertainment”, and “that friend part has gone down quite a bit.”

It seems people have finally had enough, and they are not just taking breaks but actively deleting their accounts. Digital detox retreats are now booming. Entire communities have formed around quitting. So, what finally pushed them over the edge?

In 2025, the average daily social media usage is dropping from 141 minutes per day, down from 143 minutes in 2024. That might not sound like much, but this is the first decrease in average time spent since 2018, representing a reversal of a trend that has been climbing for over a decade. As a recent study by Origin, the in-house research arm of Hill Holliday (a marketing and communications agency), found that 34% of Gen Z social media users have quit one or more platforms entirely, while 64% have taken at least a temporary break. Meanwhile, 45% of Facebook users in the United States have considered leaving the social network, the highest of any platform.

Social media has transformed into something antisocial: a broadcast network where you’re the passive audience. And now with OpenAI Sora 2, generating hyperrealistic videos that are almost indistinguishable from reality, social media slop is only going to accelerate.