The Tide is Turning: Social Media Fatigue
For the past year, I have been experiencing a slow creep of social media fatigue. Increasingly, I have found myself bored and disconnected while scrolling through Instagram. (This is my social media platform of choice. I am not on Tik Tok and LinkedIn is a platform that I’ve never really used. Pinterest used to hold a special place in my heart - but since it became chock full of ads, I have found I am less inclined to hang out there either). And it seems I am not alone. This morning I read an article on the FT titled “Have We Reached Peak Social Media?” The article summarises, in data, what I have been feeling anecdotally myself for a while - social media is just not delivering joy in the way it used to and people are starting to turn away. But why?
Well, to start with, it is really hard now to see a broad selection of content from the accounts you follow. I follow just over 1k accounts - which should, in theory, mean that I am seeing a really diverse selection of creative output, talking points and inspiring content from a wide variety of people - a thousand different accounts to tap into and be delighted by. But in general, I am probably seeing a tenth of those. I have no idea anymore who the other accounts are - at some point I felt compelled to follow them because I liked what they were creating or saying, but Instagram has other plans for me. It churns out the same accounts over and over. The ones they choose to send my way tend to be the bigger accounts. The ones I followed because they were funny and entertaining - rather than useful or inspirational - the ones that are getting lots of likes and comments because they’re, well, big. Big is better as far as Instagram is concerned. So that is one factor that creates a sense of sameness every time I open the app.
And then there is the slide towards everyone doing the exact same thing over and over in an attempt to please the algorithm. These days there is so much guidance from marketing and social media experts for how to get ahead on social media - and with everyone tapping into the same advice, all content - regardless of how different the underlying business may be - starts to look the same. The same hooks, the same movement on camera, the same audio caption text overlays the same the same the same. It’s so hard to escape. If you don’t follow this social media marketing advice, chances are you’ll be left behind. If you do follow it, chances are your content will just meld into the same as everyone else.
No one is taking a risk anymore. Everything is planned and thought through and designed. Sometimes I wonder if there is any truly fresh inspiration left. Social media is forcing us all to create and consume such a narrow creative output. And the result is fatigue and dissatisfaction. A deep sense of boredom, coupled with a need to keep opening the app in the hope that maybe, just maybe, something will delight. And finding over time, it just doesn’t.
Our habits, though, are so ingrained and the app itself is designed to keep us hooked - so even when spending time on the app is no longer providing the same kind of excitement or interest, we keep returning. Over and over. It takes a long time to step back and start realising, “hold on, this is all a bit crap and I’m not really getting anything good anymore out of it.” That’s where I’m finally at. And it’s probably taken a good year of boredom and dissatisfaction to get here.
It seems I’m not alone. Back to the FT article. A study was recently concluded that involved 250,000 adults from around the world that looked at social media usage. What they found was that the global trend for social media use peaked in 2022 and has been on the decline since - most notably from young adults aged 16-24 years old. The only demographic increasing their time on social media were 55-64 year olds. This demographic trend reminds me of when Instagram started to emerge, ten years ago, as the fastest growing social media platform surpassing Facebook. At the time I taught social media for business so I had all the statistics. I remember clearly the graph of social media use - young people were turning away from Facebook in droves and heading towards Instagram - and the only segment still growing Facebook’s share was an older generation. What happened with Facebook is now happening, 10 years later, with Instagram. As an older generation start to tune in and use Instagram, young people are moving on. And it’s not just youth, across the board (with the exception of the older segment), usage is falling. With one huge caveat - the United States. While the rest of the world are starting to turn their back on Instagram in search of something more, American’s are continuing to consume content and increase their time on the platform. No one is sure why.
One interesting graph from the article provides a clue as to where Instagram has gone wrong over time - the reason people started using the app in the first place. Since 2014, the reasons for using Instagram that were to do with ‘Meeting New People’, ‘Keeping up with Friends’ and to ‘Share an Opinion’ has plummeted. Those reasons for being on the app just aren’t relevant anymore and no one is answering positively to these reasons. ‘To Follow Celebrities’ showed an upward tick as a reason for being on the app until about 2021, when it too, starts to head south. And in a sign of total social media fatigue, even the reason of ‘To Fill Spare Time’ has started to flat line. When mindlessly scrolling is not even compelling enough to be on the app, what is left?
The essence of what made Instagram - or back in the day, Facebook - so fun to be on has been lost with commercialisation. I think I can generalise by saying, we are all sick of being sold to constantly.
There is no let up anymore. Where Facebook and Instagram started - as a place of community, to connect with others and share interesting and creative imagery and thoughts, has been stripped away and replaced with a sales platform. Sure, there are still accounts creating interesting and beautiful content just for the sheer delight of it, but those accounts are not being shown to us. They’re not profitable to Meta, so their content is devalued by the algorithm. At this point, a scroll through Instagram is a hamster wheel of actual ads, sponsored content or content designed to sell us something. No one even bothers anymore to signal that their content is sponsored or is an ad. That’s how ubiquitous it has become.
With recent life events, I have become more aware of what makes me feel happy and what is draining me. I am looking for, and questioning, what I really need and want in my life. And I think that’s what has led me over the past week to open my eyes and realise how little I am enjoying time on Instagram. So this weekend, I made a conscious decision to not really open the app. I barely went on it at all and instead I found other things to do. I finished the book I had been reading (which I loved, Bel Canto by Ann Patchett), I read World of Interiors magazine while I ate breakfast (a key instagram scroll moment for me) and I put the BBC World Service on our blue tooth speaker in the dining room as company. Their programming is always thought provoking and interesting. And lastly, after listening to a podcast with Dr. Richard Harris (How Other Dad’s Dad) I watched ‘The Rescue’ documentary yesterday afternoon while the thunderstorm raged. I would never normally turn on the TV during the day as it feels a bit lazy and slovenly, but I realised that watching a documentary was far less lazy and far more enriching than mindlessly scrolling on my phone - which I feel totally fine about doing as an activity.
None of these activities gave me a dopamine hit - but by not going on social media, I didn’t feel depleted by looking for one either. Because that’s the thing - the more we look for that little dopamine hit and the more it alludes us, the more we keep seeking it out until we actually just feel kind of empty.
Instagram was not happy with me either. It kept trying to get me to open the app. How? By showing a number on the app screen to indicate I had a message or an engagement that I needed to see. “Open me” it kept saying. “No really, open me! There’s someone who has interacted with your account!” It wasn’t prepared to let me go - not even for a day. Throughout the day, as the number would appear on the app logo on my phone screen, I would open it only to see it was a single ‘like’. I’d close the app. I didn’t stay on it. I didn’t scroll. Instagram kept trying. Drip feeding alerts to me one ‘like’ at a time to keep me opening the app in a hope that I would then spend time on it. I resisted.
What started as a place of social connection, has left us all less connected or at the very least, no more connected that we were before. Real connection alludes us on social media. And the more time we spend on it, perhaps the less time we are using to call a friend, or engage with our family (all of whom are probably in a similar state of scrolling on some kind of device - each of us in a solo pursuit in the same room). That’s not being social. That is the definition of anti social.
As a business owner, I don’t have an alternative for how to reach my audience without Instagram. It feels impossible. Yes, I have a newsletter list that I communicate with once a month - but even that is becoming over saturated. Substacks and newsletters are starting to overwhelm our inboxes and fatigue is setting in there too. So I’m not sure what the answer is. For now, being on Instagram is one of the few alternatives for marketing a business, but it is increasingly becoming less and less effective. For me, I’ve decided to reduce down the mindless scroll. And I’ve started to whittle down (slowly) who I am following in a hope to see more of the accounts that are small and interesting and where an actual connection can exist. For now, that feels like a start.