Is social media finally losing its grip on us?

What have you been searching for? I don’t mean on the rocky road towards enlightenment. Though, if you’re on that trek, good for you. Write in and tell us how it’s going. All engagement is good engagement. 

I mean online, through your chosen device. We’re at the time of the year when our digital habits are collected and repackaged back to us. You may well be sharing your Spotify Wrapped and trying to explain why you went quite so often for John Denver’s “Sunshine on My Shoulders” (don’t be embarrassed; it’s a song that punches… talking to myself here, mostly). 

Other significant organisations are telling us what it was we wanted to know. YouTube are at it now.

The biggest search on Wikipedia over the last 12 months was for Charlie Kirk, the young American right-wing activist who was shot dead in September. It seems that 40% of those searches came from outside the US. The Wiki search top 10 is indicative of how the gravity in international political discourse is held by the US – Donald Trump, Elon Musk and Zohran Mamdani are there. But then, so is serial killer Ed Gein, Superman and Pope Leo, so make of that what you will. 

Clearly the iron hand of digital overlords controls much of the detail of how we live now, frequently unseen. It’s what Yanis Varoufakis has dubbed technofeudalism, that sense that we’re merely serfs in this big net, handing over our data adding increasing value to those at the top of the chain, as they sell us more stuff, while we have less and less ability to positively control.

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Sometimes it’s not even intentional on our part. The Google alerts that come from conversations remain a shadowy element that, while sinister, I do find amusing. Delighted to get info on Rowlinson Lechlade Bird Tables and The Joy of Wearing a Really Good Pair of Socks. Don’t need sold on that one – particularly a longer calf-covering sock, in a rich merino. 

Change could be coming. A few years ago the journalist/tech doctor Cory Doctorow came up with the idea of enshittification, essentially how digital platforms decay over time. He identified a cycle – initially, they are high quality to attract users; then, when users are locked in they serve businesses (mostly advertisers); once both sets are chained, the platform has no reason to maintain quality and it becomes so degraded for both consumers and advertisers it exists solely to milk whatever short-term profit it can for shareholders.

It is clear where this cycle of diminishing returns is happening – you can make your own decision on exactly where Twitter/X is within the cycle. And it’s now expanded beyond simply a digital universe. Academics Michael David Maffie and Hector Hurtado published a paper a couple of months ago investigating work conditions in the gig economy and how platforms in that world are now, in effect, applying the law of enshittification. Will it make everybody think again when ordering an Uber?

Read more:

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• Who needs meditation when you have a garden to potter in?

One of Doctorow’s means of combating this, particularly on social, was to fight the algorithm – so that platforms respond to what we ask for rather than feeding us what they want. 

But, it seems people are already choosing their own way. If they can’t escape, they just go a bit Bartleby – they stop. A big piece of research carried out by the FT on the online habits of 250,000 adults in more than 50 countries has shown people turning away from the platforms.

Usage is down on socials almost 10% since 2022. More significantly, the share of people who use the platforms to meet or stay in touch with friends and family is down a quarter in a decade. Maybe a human touch is again desired.

It’s not clear whether this will knock holes in the castles of technofeudalism, though it does feel like a means for a little Christmas cheer. 

I’ll just double-check my Spotify Wrapped one more time, before I Google how to seek enlightenment…

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