Why many people stopped posting on social media

After two decades of sharing more and more posts online, it seems we've decided to cut back on sharing.

Recent research indicates that about a third of all social media users post less than they did a year ago. And this trend is especially present among Generation Z adults (those born between 1995 and 2010).

In a recent article for The New Yorker, writer Kyle Chayka suggested that society may be heading toward what he calls "post zero" — a point at which ordinary people realize it's no longer worth sharing their lives online.

I've noticed this downward trend on my own social media. For every photo of a friend's vacation or a colleague's kids, there seem to be dozens (if not hundreds) of posts from brands and influencers promoting a new product or discussing the latest trends.

Social media used to feel like an imperfect copy of my social life. But now, it feels like just another piece of "content."

I know part of this is because platforms have changed. TikTok and Instagram have amassed endless collections of vertical videos and created frighteningly powerful algorithms to guide you through them.

But what happens to our digital lives when social media seemingly becomes much less social?

I spoke with Kyle to learn more. He's a journalist for The New Yorker and his latest book is Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture.

Check out our conversation below, edited for brevity and clarity.

Katty Kay (BBC): When I look at my social media feeds, I see so many ads and photos of beautiful houses I'll never buy, in places I'll probably never even visit.

But I'm literally trying to remember the last time I actually saw a friend's post.

What does this mean for the future of these platforms, if the reason we visit them now is completely different than it was just two years ago?

Kyle Chayka: I think social media has become less social. It's become more about consuming this type of content, which is now essentially a commodity.

It's more about lifestyle aspirations, not simply about what's going on around you and how you interact with your friends and family. To me, that kind of defeats the purpose of social media.

If platforms are losing focus on people's normal lives and normal people no longer feel encouraged to post, social media becomes like television.

What we're left with are brand ads, fast fashion , and ads for homes and hotels, no longer the kind of organic, highly consistent content we were used to.

Kay: Social media company administrators have very sophisticated algorithms to captivate us.

What's their reaction to this? Or are they simply happy to have more ads and make more money from advertising?

Chayka: I think your main customers are advertisers. So, as long as we, the users, are still engaged, your business model still works.

I think they're also betting that human-generated content will gradually be replaced by AI-generated content.

You can already see Meta kind of moving the Facebook and Instagram feed towards this computer-generated content, which is obviously endless and cheap, but also insignificant, in my opinion.

Kay: Do you think there's a possibility that social media platforms will see a significant reduction in people actually logging in to see where our friends spent their holidays or what they had for breakfast?

Chayka: I think so.

I think there's a slight decline. I know of a recent study that found fewer people are actually posting on TikTok.

But what these platforms have found, I think Instagram in particular, is that our personal sharing is moving more towards direct messages and one-on-one conversations with our friends.

In fact, we need an online social network. But the social networks we have now don't really want to play this role.

So I think there will be new spaces and perhaps new applications will emerge to meet this need, whether it's an expanded WhatsApp or a better management system for all the chat groups with your friends.

I think we're moving towards a more private, more intimate form of connecting online.

Kay: I have children in their 20s and teenagers. There was a perception in my generation that young people today don't care about privacy and are happy to post anything online.

I wonder if we were wrong about this, that young people have tasted this world where everything was put out in the open, and now they're thinking, "Actually, I prefer my groups to be more intimate and curated, without the whole world knowing what I had for breakfast."

Chayka: I think we kind of learned the downsides of publishing our private lives throughout the 2010s. You can see that with public shaming or certain viral embarrassments that happened to people.

I think the social contract of networks has changed.

The deal was that if you published there, if you put out content, you could attract a massive audience. But this becomes a vicious cycle that ends up being your entire life.

So unless you're looking to be an influencer or someone who posts content online professionally, this deal doesn't seem so good anymore.

The disadvantages of posting are too great, and the advantages aren't enough. So, you might as well just text your friends.

Kay: I had a really interesting conversation with Jonathan Haidt [the author of the book Generation Anxiety ], who has certainly put a lot of work into trying to ban cell phones in schools.

Do you think that if the trend you mentioned (and call "zero posts") ends up becoming a more significant trend, it will actually become easier to break children's addiction to cell phones and other devices?

Chayka: That's a good question. I think, in some ways, we've already surpassed the peak of social media, but I don't think it eliminates the digital conversations people have 24/7.

What happens is that this conversation moves from public channels to group chats, direct messages, or some more ephemeral platform, like Snapchat.

The addictive nature of cell phones still exists. The distraction is certainly still present. But I think its public nature has diminished.

I think it's a little better that we've left the public sphere and eliminated that risk of being completely exposed to the entire world and ending up going viral for the wrong reasons.

But we still text each other all day. We still consume memes. We're still distracted by our feeds.

Kay: Let's think about the future. How will we look at our cell phones in five years?

What will change in our interactions with the social component of our cell phones and other devices?

Chayka: I think it will be more like television.

If we look at how everything is happening, there's a lot of professionalized media. There's a lot of passive content.

We're kind of seeing this current fusion of YouTube, TikTok, and Netflix into one diabolical combination of audio, video, and algorithms.

If I were to predict something, I would say that conversations and the social aspect will be in text messages or maybe they will move more towards real life.

I think this social media boom has served more to create a desire for interaction between people and reminded us of the value of actually sharing things in real life. This gives me some hope.

Kay: Do you think we'll get to a world of zero posts, where people like you and me just don't post online anymore?

Chayka: I think so. I think it will arrive sooner than we expect, simply because there is no longer any incentive to post.

Why post your selfies or your breakfast if no one pays attention, if you don't reach your friends and simply compete with all this abstracted remote garbage out there?

Maybe social media was, in some ways, this aberration or escape. And this idea that every normal person should share their life in public was kind of false from the beginning.

Now, we're waking up a bit and seeing the damage it caused. And changing our habits a bit.