Have We Passed Peak Social Media? (ft.com)
- Reference: 0179638820
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/10/03/0825245/have-we-passed-peak-social-media
- Source link: https://www.ft.com/content/a0724dd9-0346-4df3-80f5-d6572c93a863
Usage has traced a smooth curve upward and then downward over the past decade. This is not simply the unwinding of increased screen time during pandemic lockdowns. The data also captured a shift in how people use these platforms. The share of people who report using social media to stay in touch with friends, express themselves or meet new people has fallen by more than a quarter since 2014.
Opening the apps reflexively to fill spare time has risen. North America is an exception to the global trend. Social media consumption there continues to climb. By 2024 it reached levels 15% higher than Europe. Meta and OpenAI recently announced new social platforms that will be filled with AI-generated short-form videos.
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/a0724dd9-0346-4df3-80f5-d6572c93a863
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The article is paywalled, but I'm 99% sure this report is saying that per capita use is down (controlling for population changes).
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Yes, and we read about him in the weekly midnight star.
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> I'm an American I'm not counting my country as developed anymore if I ever would
I think you don't know a lot about third world countries.
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I don't know I live in one so I think I at least have first-hand experience.
And no, I refuse to call a country that doesn't even have a functioning healthcare system a first world country. Never mind the fact that our democracy is collapsing. But hey how about those trans girls in sports!
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90% of the U.S. population has health insurance. Could be better, but saying we don't have a functioning healthcare system is a stretch.
But don't worry, in 1,205 days, President Newsom will fix everything.
Re: So estheticians had a problem (Score:2)
Very, very expensive health care/insurance.
A stupidly large segment of US households are one major medical incident away from going broke. Insurance is there to maximize profits and sponsor naming rights on arenas and stadiums, not to actually help people.
I sprained my MCL years ago and got a prescription for a knee brace. My insurance was charged $400 of which around $150 came out of my pocket. Little did I know I could buy the exact brace direct from the company for $85.
Health care in the US is
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> 90% of the U.S. population has health insurance.
Not for long. The Felon in charge and all his Minions are working hard to eliminate subsidies. I work in budgeting for a national healthcare provider. Expectation for 2026 is a reduction in membership, with that reduction being mostly the healthy people who feel they don't need insurance. So, revenues will go down, but costs won't go down. (The healthcare provider I'm talking about is both an insurance company and a hospital system.)
Also, I'm pretty su
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slivergrunt: Was it over when the estheticians bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!
Otter: [to Boon] Estheticians?
Boon: Forget it, he's rolling.
Text to speech is a harsh Mistress (Score:2)
Has any good statistician will agree with. On The plus side I am confusing the hell out of the llm that is training on my comments.
Sponsored content (Score:2)
My feeds are filled up with too much sponsored content that is repetitive. All this in your face advertising make social media less and less atractive
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But the ads themselves are fun interactive experiences. Leaving sarcastic comments on Facebook ads can be a fun past time, especially when others join in.
Ultimately it doesn't matter what the content is, as long as you're getting that dopamine rush when someone likes your comment.
One can only hope. (Score:3)
One can only hope this is the case.
Instead of being the Great Unifier, Social Media ended up being The Big Chisel: Finely crafted of the hardest vitriol, finely honed to a razor's edge by greed. A tool to split and divide.
Sometimes I get all misty-eyed for the days of One Common Dialog, which was put out by The Big Three (ABC / CBS / NBC)
Then I remember all of them lie like rugs, and Pulitzer and Hearst were the biggest liars before TV.
So yes. I hope this piece of shit is on the decline, and people think more.
Walks in parks are good. Pick up disc golfing, go for a round, that's two hours, a couple of joints, some Beethoven, and for those two hours, all is good. Until you shank one into the lake.
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Well put. I'd add "learn guitar" to that list.
It's easy to get to your first 3 chord tune, and has room to grow as your skill grows, you can have a lifetime of enjoyment and satisfaction.
In the hands of an expert, guitar may be a better instrument than piano, or a violin, imho.
I play piano. After I discovered Bach sonatas, partitas, and other mostly violin pieces played on guitar, I went to heaven. The guitar is more expressive than the piano, and less screechy than the violin (violin takes much longer to a
Social media is becoming... (Score:2)
...increasingly useless to me
It's filled with scams, ads, "suggested" things, and AI slop
It seems to get worse each day
And then I read about FB trying to develop AI "friends"
They are a strong contender for gold in the olympics of stupid ideas
Social Media Became Anti-Social Media (Score:2)
When you have companies selling personal information and dossiers on their netcitaens, have AI mining everything, and you have fascist--what did you think was going to happen?
Dark prediction (Score:2)
Like many people, I'd like to see social media burned to a crisp and driven back to hell.
But I suspect that won't happen.
Becauuuse... chicks wiggling their asses on TikTok have enduring appeal, but especially to 10 year old boys, or anyone new to phones/social media. I had an Indonesian client, a well heeled lawyer. He explained something to me about the attitude there. If your phone was preloaded with shitware, or you get shitware by downloading apps, or by any means, the average Indonesian doesn't care...
kinda like the internet (Score:2)
The early internet was more about individuals doing things and connecting. By 2025 the internet is dominated by a few big players and most of the individuals have given up.
Social media used to be about connecting to people. Increasingly it is about connecting you to ways to spend or vote. Increasingly, the content isn't even made or consumed by humans.
We've lost the human connection.
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Yeah. Even net searches on Google are mostly useless now. Time to go back to (gasp!) books but not so good for things recent or trying to find (say) a research paper on something
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We went backwards from 1996 to 2006 and then again sometime 2008 to 2012. The internet was the best on fire over NNTP.
Who wants this? (Score:2)
> Meta and OpenAI recently announced new social platforms that will be filled with AI-generated short-form videos
So only AI will watch it in order to generate even more of the same content? Pass.
Life's too short to spend it on social media. 20 minutes of scrolling and I've been told what to buy, what to like, who to hate, what to be outraged about, why I'm not attractive enough, what exciting thing someone is doing that I'm not doing...all while the company can jam in as many ads and "engagement" opportunities as possible. It's exploitative and exhausting and there's no reason to visit anymore.
In the early days of
not surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
it's not really social anymore. it used to be for interacting with people, now it is mostly ads for stuff i don't care about and clickbait
well it sucks now (Score:2)
it sucks balls.
Social media is good Enshittification is bad (Score:2)
I think everyone can agree that social media is theoretically positive, but every implementation out there has been thoroughly enshittified. IMHO, Reddit is not there yet...mostly because it's as much reference and discussion as social media, but Facebook, Twtter, Instagram, and LinkedIn definitely are and Nextdoor was always shitty. I LOVED Facebook at first. It was a means of connecting with long lost friends and sharing my life with people I am close to...but Zuck fell asleep at the wheel and made it
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> Zuck fell asleep at the wheel and made it a cesspool.
Zuck didn't fall asleep at the wheel. He was driving straight for the cesspool, wide awake, and on purpose from the beginning. Anyone who couldn't see where he was going was simply not looking.
> We NEED social media in it's proper form.
I don't disagree, but if you want to supplant the public square with an online space, it needs to be decentralized and ideally should actually belong to the public.
I might be old (Score:2)
but I still see no point in social media. I only began to go on Twitter because I wanted to see what John Carmack was up to. I read his posts and close the page. I think "social media" is for catching up with famous or important people, I'm not interested to see what random people say and certainly not what they're fighting over.
There also seems to be a race over how many followers one wants to accumulate, it seems like a weird achievement zoomer are into. That can't be healthy
Is peak the right word? (Score:2)
I was thinking something along the lines of "Low Social Media"
Nadir Social Media?
Maximum Evil Social Media?
Worst Possible Social Media?
I hope so (Score:2)
It's really bad when fascists own social media networks.
It's gradually getting less useful (Score:2)
It's gradually getting less useful as it's becoming more and more overrun with bots.
Yes. The new hot trend is "taking a walk" (Score:4, Informative)
Outside. Like, with trees and stuff.
Re:Yes. The new hot trend is "taking a walk" (Score:5, Funny)
“It's dangerous to go alone! Take this.”
(hands you a smartphone)
Re: Yes. The new hot trend is "taking a walk" (Score:2)
Was talking to a kid a while back. He did not understand how we dared to go out without a cellphone in the nineties. Easy... if we were in trouble, we'd ring the doorbell of the closest house and asked if we could use their phone. Try it. Be free again.
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They have a phone? (other than a smartphone). Is there anyone home? In the US, will they shoot you?
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> In the US, will they shoot you?
Settle down now.
American doorbells still go “ding-dong”. And even Sarah J. Connor is answering the door unarmed, snickering at your paranoia.
Re: Yes. The new hot trend is "taking a walk" (Score:2)
If you felt you needed a cellphone with you when outside in the nineties, you took your cellphone with you. They cost about £13 per month and texting people information was really useful.
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your mileage may vary if your not white,