The countercurrent trend has arrived: the disconnected society
* “Social media fatigue” is the coined expression to define that part of society that is already tired of social media.
There is a growing social trend that deserves attention because its impact and expansion are being reflected worldwide: the weariness towards social media, or Social media fatigue, an expression that needs no translation. The exodus and abandonment of social networks begins and the concern reaches Silicon Valley. Executives of the leading tech companies have started to show their unease. Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter’s CEO, Jack Dorsey, publicly stated they are worried about the level of hate present on their social networks. Sean Parker, Facebook co-founder, even said that social networks are damaging our brains… Social media is no longer a paradise… something is changing.
Although it may seem paradoxical, the main social networks have reached record numbers but at the same time they have stopped growing. Facebook surpassed 2 billion users in 2018, but also began its decline: it lost audience and influence at free fall. In the USA and Canada, one million users left Facebook last year and the worldwide time spent on the platform decreased by 50 million hours. Twitter is also in decline; trust in this social network is disappearing rapidly, and user abandonment is also an increasing reality, with 13 percent of users having stopped visiting or deleted their Twitter profiles in the last year.
The flip side of social networks: Lies, hate, and privacy intrusion
Recently, Digital Awareness UK conducted a survey among 5,000 students in the United Kingdom revealing a growing negative reaction among young people towards social media. 63% of the young respondents said they wouldn’t mind if social media disappeared, while 71% said they had taken temporary digital detoxes to escape social media. A total of 57% said they had received abusive comments online, 56% admitted being on the verge of addiction, and 52% said social media made them feel less secure about their self-perception and how interesting their lives are.
Closer to home, according to the ANAR Association, cyberbullying already accounts for one in every four cases of school bullying. This proportion rises with age, so that from age 13, 36.5% of bullying cases (more than one in three) are due to cyberbullying.
But harassment and hate are not the only intrinsic problems. Social networks have become mass media outlets for fake news, the so-called Fakes that spread rapidly until they become an epidemic. This adds to the ever-increasing pollution caused by targeted advertising and campaign marketing, something that connects directly with the lack of privacy and the use of personal data for purely strategic or commercial purposes.
Scandals like the recent theft of personal data from up to 87 million Facebook users that could have been used to craft a micro-targeted marketing campaign for President Trump only emphasize the vulnerabilities and dangers of social media and the need to put a stop to the chaos they have become.
The countercurrent trend has arrived: the disconnected society.
According to a report from the RSPH and the Young Health Movement, which examined the positive and negative effects of social media on young people’s mental health, social media is directly linked to higher rates of anxiety, depression, and lack of sleep. The report includes a ranking table of social media platforms based on their impact on young people’s mental health. YouTube topped the list as the most positive, while Instagram and Snapchat emerged as the most harmful to young people’s mental health and well-being.
However, when we travel by subway, wait for the bus, or stand in line at the tax office, we look around and all we see are connected people. Faced with this reality, it is worth asking ourselves:
Is it possible to live without social media?
The answer is yes, and it is becoming a trend. Total or partial disconnection is arriving.
More and more teenagers and Millennials are leaving social media for various reasons. The need to separate their private sphere from the public one, the feeling that these platforms offer them little, the fatigue caused by the repetition of vacuous and frivolous content, the weariness from sad news, hateful messages and negative comments, the obsessiveness and addiction they cause associated with the theft of time, and the lack of credibility and trust in them.
The reasons are all weighty and associated with logic and common sense. Living without social media is not only possible but also a healthy trend. Disconnected or partially disconnected people (only sporadic use of WhatsApp) improve their quality of life since they have more time for more stimulating activities and learn to enjoy their social moments without technological dependence.
That said, we may need to rethink how we use social media and learn to live in the 21st century in a more analog way. Experiencing a new kind of freedom without technological dependence and managing our time from a more real and human perspective could be the new challenge for the generations who have grown up hooked on the web.
//
Thank you very much for reading. If you liked it, comment, share, or discover our marketing company in Valencia.
