\n<\/p>\n
For a tech writer, being very offline is sort of like being a marathon coach who doesn\u2019t run. So in 2025, I tried to reverse years of studied avoidance towards the most ubiquitous technological phenomenon on earth \u2014 I got back on social media. The change was short-lived.<\/p>\n
My first exodus from the feeds took some work \u2014 disabling notifications, removing apps from my homescreen and then deleting accounts entirely. This time, the phone put itself down. The whole thing has simply lost its luster.<\/p>\n
I started with Instagram. Every experience went like this: I\u2019d see a single post from one of the rare family members or IRL friends who are active on the platform. Next, I was fed a sponsored post, followed by suggestions to follow randos. After that, a series of influencer videos that, admittedly, appeal to my taste (funny\/absurdist women and dissertations on urban planning). That was followed up with more sponsored posts, mostly from brands I\u2019d looked up for work. Then it\u2019d circle back to the influencers. My eyes glazed over and I tossed the phone aside.<\/p>\n
Years back, the platform gave off a jolt of quasi-social connection that I\u2019d spend hours sucking up. I fed on pointless thoughts from an ex-coworker, vacation reels from a college roommate, a half-baked loaf of bread that an old friend dropped on the floor but took a picture of anyway. Now it\u2019s a bare sliver of that stuff, shoehorned between towers of sponsored content and posts from people who make or promote their living on Instagram. The real people have left. The connection is gone. The FOMO is no more.<\/p>\n
I experienced some variation of the same disappointment on every platform I rejoined. When I got back on TikTok a few months after the ban<\/a>, it felt like a frenzied shopping mall. Every video seems to be about four seconds long and most are promotional and\/or shoppable. YouTube Shorts is drowning in AI-generated videos, and I don\u2019t hit up social media to watch fake footage of desperate wild animal babies clambering onto the boats of helpful humans. My life has no need for simulated toddlers admonishing their pets. Occasionally, I\u2019d hit on something compelling: a clip from late night TV, a stupidly decadent dessert recipe, people from other countries explaining cultural subtleties.<\/p>\n But for me, these social media platforms are no longer velcro for the eyes. I remember losing focus, spending long hours on YouTube Shorts and IG. I\u2019d look up bleary-eyed and shame-faced after hours scrolling TikTok\u2019s For You Page. Now, after a few minutes, a bored ickiness sets in. I feel like I\u2019m trapped in a carnival of bots hawking shampoo at me and I just want to go home.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not a mystery how or why things feel different; The answer is always money. These billion- and trillion-dollar companies have shareholders who prize year-over-year performance over anything else. So we get more sponsored posts on Instagram. TikTok purposefully<\/a>, enthusiastically<\/a> overloads itself with shoppable content (which isn\u2019t going to change no matter who owns it<\/a>). YouTube is obsessed with engagement<\/a> so it ends up rewarding people<\/a> who flood the platform with AI slop. These platforms aren\u2019t about human connections and the spread of creativity \u2014 the stuff that used to draw me in \u2014 they\u2019re thinly varnished ecommerce sites sprinkled with brute-forced<\/a> AI oddities.<\/p>\n I\u2019d be sadder about the whole thing if I thought it could be any different. These companies are among<\/a> the most<\/a> valuable<\/a> in the world. The fact that I can\u2019t connect with my fellow common people using their services is not surprising. The change isn\u2019t even driving everyone away. Instagram reported more users than ever this year, to the tune of 35 percent of the planet<\/a>. Billions of users still scroll TikTok and watch YouTube Shorts. So maybe it\u2019s just a me thing.<\/p>\n And I have options. Over-monetization may have made me not want to engage with a few social media behemoths, but things aren\u2019t so dire everywhere. Bluesky reminds me of Twitter before X. I take comfort in seeing posts that prove most people are as dismayed as I am over a government and wider economic system that are nakedly uninterested in serving the public. The hot takes aren\u2019t quite as funny as they were on Twitter years back \u2014 maybe it\u2019s just all been said before or perhaps things have gotten too dire for levity. I still don\u2019t end up spending a lot of time on the platform, however. It\u2019s not as weird as it was before the defection<\/a> and I get tired of the stream of news headlines contextualized with tut-tutting and handwringing \u2014 I\u2019m perfectly capable of doing that myself.<\/p>\n It\u2019d be easy to say that social media just isn\u2019t my thing, but that\u2019s not true because I can\u2019t quit Reddit \u2014 the shining exception to my social media ennui. It feels filled with actual people. Ads exist, but in a subdued, manageable way. And every contributor, commenter and moderator I\u2019ve come across on the app is militantly vigilant against the onslaught of artificially generated content. I also like the organizational structure. I know my Home tab will only expose me to my chosen subs and I derive great joy from happy cows, greeble-chasing cats, enigmatic night feelings and freaky abandoned spaces. I use my local subreddit r\/Albuquerque daily to answer questions and keep tabs on the world (directly) around me.<\/p>\n Sadly, Reddit is an outlier, a misfit exception to the rule, and now that it\u2019s gone public<\/a>, it may follow a similar monetization<\/a> push. Bluesky is tiny, new and not yet profitable<\/a>, so who knows where its financial journey will lead it (though the \u201cworld without Caesars<\/a>\u201d shirt gives us some hope).<\/p>\n There\u2019s something lamentable about the loss of the connections we gleaned from platforms that were once compelling, engrossing and rife with the creativity of our fellow humans. Ultimately, any public-facing company that prioritizes profits over everything else has no incentive to look out for its users. So I don\u2019t expect any of the larger social platforms to pull back on their monetization marches. For now, I\u2019ve decided I\u2019m comfortable with my admittedly narrow interaction with the world of social media. As a Gen-Xer, online-first wasn\u2019t how my relationship to the world started out. And I\u2019m pretty confident I know enough about other tech-related stuff to be useful to my editors and readers without a black belt in social. (Ed. note: She is.)<\/em> Besides, Karissa\u2019s<\/a> got us covered.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n