by By: Jack Berenson
For many of us college students, we’ve grown up with social media for nearly our entire childhood. It’s become second nature to wake up, grab your phone and check what you missed on Instagram, Snapchat or Twitter while you were asleep. Probably nothing. Maybe it’s an addiction or just a habit. However, recent signs have pointed to the steady decline of these social media platforms.
While usage rates are still very high for apps such as Instagram and Facebook, the attention span of many millennials and Gen Zers are starting to run thin. Instagram is bombarding its users with ads, Snapchat has revealed a weird AI feature, Elon Musk has made major changes to Twitter and Facebook has already lost it’s touch within the age range of roughly 18-40. The statistics don’t necessarily show it, but these platforms are not as effective at drawing the user in as they once were. On top of that, there have been several studies in recent years that have pointed out the correlation between increased social media use and mental health issues.
In recent months, Mark Zuckerberg and Meta (formerly Facebook) have laid off nearly 11,000 people. Elon Musk’s Twitter purchase has resulted in millions of users leaving the app and advertisers pulling away from the platform. Companies such as Coca-Cola, Jeep and Wells Fargo have backed out of ad deals with the app, resulting in a roughly 60% dip in ad revenue for Twitter. And even though Instagram remains the most used platform, an imposter has arrived on the scene. The rise of BeReal has arguably taken Instagram’s shine. I haven’t even mentioned the looming ban of TikTok. While what goes on behind the scenes usually doesn’t matter to us when we open the app each day, these changes have proven to be more damaging than we know.
Social media is still very useful in many aspects, however. Using it to stay informed on what’s going on in the world, sending funny videos to your friends, connecting with people you haven’t talked to in 5 years, etc. It’s not going away anytime soon and, admittedly, I’ll still be using many of these apps by this time next year. But, unless something drastic occurs, the downward trend will continue in the coming years largely in part to our extremely short attention spans and the rise of artificial intelligence.
We won’t see major changes in the next day, week or month, but the scramble of staying relevant for these platforms will be visible in the near future. As they say, all good things must come to an end.
