Unfollowing and Uninstalling: The Love-Hate relationship with Instagram
Are you really taking care of your "Attention" Feed? Unlocking the Future of Social Media
The ultimate goal of Facebook was building connections. And a decade later we find ourselves hyer-connected but emotionally unfulfilled. Instagram and other social media apps like Snapchat have helped us build “digital habits” from posting our favorite snack of the day to gym selfies at the cost of making us feel lonelier, anxiety-ridden, and a fear of missing out.
We’re uninstalling apps, leaving groups and tracking screen time, and unfollowing influencers and accounts that control our feed and attention to get rid of mindless scrolling.
People who aren’t influencers only use it to watch other people make big announcements. The app’s original purpose has been lost in the era of “performance” media.
But things are not too bad. Instagram is free, easy, and intuitive to use, serving a wide variety of purposes from building a storefront to going live in a theme park; finding inspiration for traveling and fashion to knowledge sharing, and an awesome place to self-promote your creative skills. So what’s the real fuss about it and similar social media platforms?
Let’s dive in.
Algorithm-driven feed
Too many ads and paid promotion noises
Lack of community feeling
Designed for self-promotion
Lack of privacy and data protection
Fear Machine
Disagree with the platform’s value
Algorithms structured posts based on individual behavior and ads have optimized our attention spans, leading to more scrolling and more dissatisfaction, to sum up, Instagram dominates your feed and how you connect with your future followers.
As we look to the future of social media, it's clear that users are demanding a better value proposition. Instead of simply performing for an audience, people want to be a part of a community where they can build deeper connections, find greater utility, and engage in freer play.
The key to this lies in creating spaces that foster communal building, where users are empowered to create their own online experiences alongside others. These digital communities will be focused on shared interests, principles, purpose, questions, experiences, or knowledge, giving rise to new subcultures and micro-communities that offer more meaningful connections.
Instead of focusing on individuals, we should focus on their relationships and look at the communities they belong to.
One example of this approach is Netflix's use of "taste communities," which group viewers based on their movie and TV show preferences. These communities are then further divided into "microgenres" based on extensive tagging of Netflix's content. By matching micro-communities with micro-genres, Netflix is able to create a more personalized and relevant experience for its viewers.
This approach has the potential to be applied to other areas of life beyond media consumption. By focusing on the social networks and communities that individuals belong to, it may be possible to gain a deeper understanding of their needs and preferences and to create more effective and targeted interventions in areas such as healthcare, education, and social services.
Overall, the shift from individual-centric to community-centric analysis has the potential to be a powerful tool for understanding and improving human behavior and well-being.
To make this happen, the social media platforms of the future will need to embrace the principles of exclusivity, access, and identity. By targeting specific groups of people based on factors like age, profession, or location, these platforms will be able to offer a more tailored experience. Members will also be able to progress through different tiers of engagement, gaining access to more features and information as they go. And, perhaps most importantly, the community will allow members to develop a unique identity that expresses their social status and allows them to be authentically themselves.
The future social media platform will run with the following principles:
Exclusivity: Targeting a specific group of people differentiated y one or a combination of factors like age, profession, and location.
Access: Community members’ journey takes them through several tiers, with access to more features, information, or layers of engagement the higher up they go.
Identity: The community allows members to develop a unique identity that can serve their social status and express themselves authentically.
Overall, the future of social media is about creating spaces that empower users to build meaningful connections and engage in deeper, more authentic forms of social interaction. By embracing these principles, we can create digital communities that truly reflect the diverse and vibrant range of human experiences.