Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate our feeds

Social media platforms used to be about communication between friends – now many are increasingly short video entertainment hubs. The business model is to increase the time people spend on their apps and increase ad revenue. But is there already a consumer backlash?

Aurélia fixes herself a coffee, sits down in her beautiful garden not far from Paris and goes on Instagram "to relax." First up: "a guy I like a lot who does interior design. He's in Venice at the moment." She's into interior design, and has even just had two bird drawings by the 19th Century English designer William Morris tattooed on her arms. She scrolls down. Two kittens having a fight. "I love animals so I get a lot of animals. That's how it works, social media. You click on bananas and they give you bananas."

There are ads too – although they look just like the other posts – for a robot-vacuum cleaner, a diet and bed linen (with Morris-inspired designs). But no friends. She has 198 on Instagram but she says "it's completely changed. I practically don’t see any friends' posts anymore." She’s pretty much given up posting herself. "I don't think anyone sees them anymore anyway." 

While there remain committed social, amateur posters on Instagram and especially Facebook, the switch from communicating with people you know to scrolling through professionally made content from people you don't, is even more pronounced among young users.

Kylian, 16, is in vocational training to become a chef. He's on TikTok and Youtube a lot, he says. "I like looking at videos more than photos or messages. I watch videos made by people I don't know. I don’t post at all. I'm a rather shy person. I stay in my bubble. I watch and that’s all. I keep my reactions to myself."

"I spend a lot of time scrolling through videos made by content-creators," says Lucie, also 16. "They're more interesting than the posts of people I know." She doesn't post except sometimes "stories" which disappear after 24 hours. 

Whether it's TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram, we are a long way from the "digital town square" of personal interaction that social media was even just a few years ago.

In France, annual official Barometre du numerique 2026 shows 49% of social media users are "active only occasionally". In the UK, an Ofcom report  published in April showed a year-on-year drop of users who actively post from 61% to 49%. In the US, a Morning Consult survey of June last year found 28% reported posting less often than the previous year. Just 33% now post daily compared to 57% who use it for entertainment daily. The gap is a lot wider still for Gen Z – 18% active for 74% passive.

Vanessa Lalo, a Paris-based clinical psychologist specialising in on-line behaviour, says "users have become more conscious that the traces you leave (on social media) stay there forever and some no longer want to maintain social media relations that can be superficial. Some don’t want the exposure to criticism that might be a risk when you post or the feeling that their post will seem poor alongside all the professional content".

However, Lalo adds, people haven’t stopped posting, rather they are posting........

© BBC