The change was almost invisible, but it had enormous consequences. Slowly and without fanfare, around the end of the aughts, social media took its place. Social networking had its problems-collecting friends instead of, well, being friendly with them, for example-but they were modest compared with what followed.
The shift began 20 years ago or so, when networked computers became sufficiently ubiquitous that people began using them to build and manage relationships. The practice evolved via a weird mutation, one so subtle that it was difficult to spot happening in the moment. Perhaps we can find some relief: Social media was never a natural way to work, play, and socialize, though it did become second nature. Now that we’ve washed up on this unexpected shore, we can look back at the shipwreck that left us here with fresh eyes. It’s never felt more plausible that the age of social media might end-and soon. Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter has caused advertisers to pull spending and power users to shun the platform (or at least to tweet a lot about doing so). Mark Zuckerberg’s empire has lost hundreds of billions of dollars in value and laid off 11,000 people, with its ad business in peril and its metaverse fantasy in irons. Facebook is in decline, Twitter in chaos.
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