The reason why it seemed that social networks were going to change everything was that promise of the democratization of communication. A paradise in which any citizen with Internet access creates an account and interacts with or addresses a company, brand or politician without intermediaries.
But nothing is forever and media consumption has changed. It is undoubted. As I have already commented opportunely in another column, people see more and more things in increasingly shorter periods of time and in more channels, affecting both the way of communicating and where and how to do it.
In addition to this, the fake news, the hate speech, the excess of filters and the perfect life reached their maximum expression with the hyperconnection that the pandemic brought, generating a depletion not only of the social media model as we know it, but also of users increasingly closer to disconnection and digital detox than to continuing to be part of the conversation in spaces that ceased to be organic to become a plain and simple business. An example of this is the celebrities who have been closing their accounts for some time now to preserve their mental health, or even brands such as the British Lush that opted to leave the networks and have a more tangible and personalized contact with their clients.
The logic of social networks changed. The decline of Facebook is undeniable, the “tiktokization” of Instagram has become exhausting for users, LinkedIn already looks like Facebook because people talk more about their personal issues than work and even actions with influencers in the best Instagram style are seen more and more on this professional network. And let’s not even talk about Twitter which, as Mauricio Cabrera, creator of Story Baker, “if what he wants is to be the great moderator of the global conversation (… ) The audience, at least, wonders if it makes sense to be in the great global media in the hands of the richest man in the world (…) Never before like now had been given the opportunity for the media to be the ones to decide to say goodbye to the networks”. Parallel to this, TikTok is consolidated because it entertains and Twitch because of the immediacy of the streaming and win BeReal place away from the abuse of filters “instagramers”.
On the business side, more and more companies are putting their strategies in “airplane mode” until they see what happens with this debacle, because it is increasingly complex to plan when the rules are constantly changing. And here the big question arises, how long can social networks afford to ignore the fact that more and more users are withdrawing and brands that are on pause?
According to specialists on the subject, this is the big problem facing social networks today. On the one hand, the filtering of content and information and, on the other, the abandonment by exhausted users who are reluctant to let the algorithms decide for them what they should or should not consume.
Will it be the beginning of the end? I prefer to think that, as Jorge Drexler’s song says, “nothing is lost, everything is transformed.”