This year is the twentieth birthday of Facebook and social media. Facebook still holds the biggest share in the social media platforms. Over three billion people, that is 60 percent of Internet users, scroll Facebook posts. Facebook is followed by YouTube, WhatsApp and Instagram. Yet, Meta, the mother company of Facebook is the absolute dominant player. Six of the most downloaded Mobile Apps belong to Meta, turning Meta to the biggest seller of Advertisement after google. Last year almost half of screen-time worldwide was spent on Social Media. The “Digital Square”, a label invented by Mark Zackerburg, is where the arguments of the society are heard and public opinion is shaped.
But this network of news circulation and social network is disappearing. This is mostly due to the strong arrival of China’s TikTok. TikTok is based on sharing short videos. Its successful market penetration has forced other major players to follow the suit. Instagram started the Reels. YouTube started Shorts. Twitter is also diving into more video intense contents.
Previously, people’s content feed was based on what their network of friends posted and liked. TikTok on the other hand used AI models to predict the interests of individual users and show them the content based on the predictions. This method also gained popularity. If you scroll down Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter feeds, you will see the posts from people you are not following.
This helped platforms to attract more users and make current users to spend more time in these Social media. Time Spent on Instagram raised 40 percent after it started the Reels.This obviously translated into more advertisement and heftier Add income. But it was not without cost. According to a survey, people are becoming less likely to post their pictures and share their posts in their close circle of friends. As influencers’ short videos are becoming more sophisticated, people find their daily posts less exciting to be shared on their page. Sharing personal contents among a circle of friends, and interacting with them was one of the first goals of these Platforms.
As the creative influencer based content is rising, the amount of news and politics related posts and contents are diminishing. While in 2018, 26 percent of people reposted the sharing news, in 2023 it declined to 10 percent. Although influenced based material boosted the time people spent on Social media, it may pose a threat to them in the longer run.
