[ZaoLahma]

I, Millennial, am seeing a huge decline in social media usage among my peers. It's reached the point where I didn't even bother to install any of the apps when I got a new phone last year, other than Facebook Messenger which we still use for planning activities.

The vast majority of my friends and "friends" on social media haven't posted anything for years. I think my last contribution was back in 2017.

I thought social media in general is boomer / gen X town nowadays.

[Springtime]

Just to clarify, is the scope of social media being referred to here particular, typical apps (eg: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram), or any app/service that has interactive social and media elements (eg: Discord, Reddit)?

[ZaoLahma]

I really think we need to make a (large) difference between platforms focused on user interaction and discussion (Discord, Reddit, old school forums, ...) and platforms where the person behind the user is the focus and placed in front of the entire world to be judged (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, ...).

The former is not focused on you as a person and you are judged by the discussion that you participate in, while the latter is focused on you as a person and you are judged by how interesting you are or can appear to be.

My peers are disappearing from the latter category (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, ...)

I don't think I know the user name of any of my friends on Reddit even, or who are active there, which is exactly the point - nobody cares about the connection to the real life person.

[Springtime]

I agree about more specific definitions of what is being referred to in discussions under the umbrella term 'social media', particularly given those pushing for regulation.

A couple things that stand out in discussions about social media negative consequences are: service-led algorithms and UX which actively fuel addictive patterns, an emphasis on a single and often IRL identity (Zuckerberg famously saying there should only be a single user identity[1]) and audience reach which is far too broad for various content.

On Discord people often become familiar with other users via their pseudonymous handles, even sharing IRL details as they're comfortable. However a few things help with this: no leaderboard-style gamification of posts like there is with Twitter or Reddit, chat is inherently lower stakes and the scope is limited to that community not the wider internet.

Traditional forums are interesting since I know various who were addicted but in a user-led rather than service-led way (ie: they've been addicted through habit of non-gamified checking of content/participation). Even expressing having anxiety posting threads due to the expectations of peers. However the benefit is still an awareness that the primary audience is mostly an in-group of (mostly friendly) peers. Whereas on Twitter for example, a user may say something for a specific intended audience but someone in bad faith re-contextualizes it and initiates dogpiling—which is an inevitability of almost any community but for sites with such broad scope is extremely difficult to moderate.

Like you mentioned, on Reddit there is almost zero emphasis on the user, whether as an OP or commenter, so there's much less interpersonal community building but OTOH much easier distancing from self 'performance'/anxiety.

[1] Some critique: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37284960

[wildrhythms]

100% agreed, I really have to question the motives of people who lump the likes of Discord in with Instagram or Tiktok. They are not comparable.