It’s 2009. You wake up to the sound of the wind whistling, leaves falling, and the distant sound of your neighbor’s lawnmower. You open your curtains to let in the bright sunlight that warms your skin. You finish your morning routine and meet the rest of your family downstairs for a home-cooked breakfast and some pleasant conversation. All without a single thought to whether or not an unread notification has popped up on your home screen. If your phone has a home screen, that’s true.
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Opinion piece by Solo Sissay, co-founder and CEO of Calaxy, a next-generation social platform that is redefining the relationship between creator and fan. Prior to founding Calaxy with his business partner, Brooklyn Nets star Spencer Dinwiddie, Solo worked as an investment banker at Citi after graduating from Wharton Business School.
Older generations of Gen Z and Millennials remember these events well. But what not everyone agrees on is when and what prompted the shift in our lives online. Life today seems like a huge departure from the good old days described above—even though it was only 15 years ago. Today, it’s common for families to share meals in silence while they’re elsewhere on their phones. And even then, it seems common for families to avoid communal meals altogether.
Over the past five years, largely due to the pandemic, we’ve seen a similar decline in how we spend time with people outside of our families. Innovations in technology and entertainment have introduced a whole new level of convenience to the end consumer, often with their own forum or app to turn each product into an “experience.” Social media companies have been the biggest beneficiaries of these developments. Looking back, it’s clear that there was a mismatch between what consumers wanted and what companies created as a need.
Capitalism and society don't really mix.
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what led to the demise of life as we once knew it. It’s important to distinguish between two eras of online communication: social networking and social media. As one might imagine, social networking and social media platforms share many similarities. Both allow users to connect with others virtually, discover new people, content, and experiences, and publish their own content. Each model grew in popularity in the 2000s, but the quest for profit led to the erasure of social networking and laid the foundation for social media’s dominance.
What makes social media really different from social media platforms of the past is the introduction of the algorithm.
Social media companies have invested a huge amount of time and resources into algorithms that prioritize engagement above all else. Social media sites have historically placed less weight on engagement numbers (and the ad revenue they bring in), focusing more on the end-user journey and experience. There’s a lot more money in advertising and pushing products in front of users than in letting them connect with each other — which is abundantly clear from the way Meta has chosen to prioritize Instagram over Facebook.
Instagram’s early days were similar to Facebook’s in that most of its use was to complement real-life friendships. As mobile technology evolved, so did its use. Suddenly, your phone had almost all the functions of a personal computer, and it had a camera that was good for fashion photography. These developments proved to be important in what followed—which suggests that Instagram’s growth was not due to its technology, but to the technological advances taking place in the world around it.
As hardware developments began to slow, Meta’s next move was to ensure that once acquired, users would stay for life. The easiest way to influence this behavior is to introduce an algorithm that ensures it. What could go wrong?
This has led to an all-out assault on our attention. Content has been algorithmically sorted to maximize the time the end user spends on the platform. We’ve lost the highlights of what’s happening with our friends. The constant iterations and more overt and aggressive changes to Instagram’s algorithm have meant that users are seeing less and less of their friends and family, and more and more content designed to anger strangers, along with subtle and overt advertising promoted by influencers.
conclusion
The death of social media wasn’t entirely in vain. There have been developments that people have welcomed – take TikTok for example and all its success, which stems from its algorithm. TikTok is the most sophisticated and multi-dimensional algorithm in the world. Businesses and individuals alike have relished the visibility and access to the rest of the world that TikTok provides. On the flip side, people struggle to leave the app – spending long hours of their day scrolling through the platform.
What brought us closer to things that were once so distant has also distanced us from the connection that social media sought to create. Users are more likely to sift through the endless stream of irrelevant internet junk or be told what to buy than to watch their childhood friend’s wedding. And it shows. We’ve never been more hateful, angry and contentious online. Meanwhile, concerns about the impact of social media on this generation’s mental health continue to grow. Oddly enough, as technology becomes a source of dread, the looming nostalgia bias suggests we may all miss the good old days. It won’t be easy, but perhaps it’s worth looking back in order to move forward.
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