Is social media in its flop era?

We spoke to VICE on the death of 2010s social media and the return of individuality in influencing.

VICE: There's been a lot of chat about the 'death' of social media as was 5-10 years ago (Instagram is dying, Twitter is imploding, TikTok is for a certain kind of person and BeReal has its limits). What are your thoughts on this? Have you noticed a shift away from social media?

Digi: People are definitely gravitating towards ways to spend time online that diverge from the social media that dominated the 2010s. Often, these moves mirror how people spent their time online before the homogenisation of the internet by Big Social: 2000s chatrooms are now Discord servers, and Blogspots and Tumblrs have become today’s Substack blogs. Plus, there’s more and more criticism about how Big Social works against us, both as individuals and as a collective  – and ironically, this information is often being distributed through Big Social, meaning it has a wide reach.

VICE: Why do you think people might be ditching older, more classic platforms like Instagram and Twitter? 

Digi: Twitter is stressing everyone out – even if you’re not anti-Elon, the app is now under constant flux and it no longer represents the institution of classic social the way it once did. Instagram has lost its identity – leaning too far into the shift towards short form video and updates that take it further and further from its DNA, instead of capitalising on users’ current nostalgia for early years Instagram, as evidenced by the boom of content that romanticises Instagram in the mid 2010s.

VICE: What do you think the future of social media might look like?

Digi: The future of social media is richer and more intimate – mirroring the days of early influence, when those who cultivated a following were Individuals first and Influencers second, i.e. fashion editors becoming the first fashion influencers on Instagram. It’ll be important to really have a point of view, rather than just creating aspirational content that matches current trends. 

Read the full article by Daisy Jones here

✨ Contributing Fairies

• Biz Sherbert, Culture Editor

✨ Digi Reading Recs

• Instagram is over (The Atlantic, Year 2022)

For more content like this, explore the rest of the Digiverse, or connect with us on TikTok or Instagram. If you’re a brand or business and want to inspire your audience in innovative ways, reach out to our strategic & creative lab eve@thedigitalfairy.co.uk