I’ve been blogging regularly every since I created my first blog on Geocities around 2001. Later I switched to WordPress. Blogging brought me to a community of writers and artists, some of whom I have met in person, collaborated with on books, and remain friends with to this day.
I’ve also been on social media a lot, but when I think about it, I don’t think it’s done much to enrich my life. Two articles (see below) I’ve read recently make a strong case for ramping down on mass social media use.
I basically agree with Westenberg and Johnston. Yes, I have a newsletter on Substack, but I am minimizing my use of Notes. Being old helps in the sense that I am more aware, now, that my life on earth is limited, and don’t want to waste my time. Priorities, you know?
Anyway, I’m not going to go on about this at length because I’m not an expert. The stats are helpful, but I’m also going on my gut feeling that it’s time to let go of mass social media. Below are a couple of quotes, and if you are interested, you can check out the links yourself:
- From J.A. Westenberg’s “The Case for Blogging in the Ruins“:
I keep thinking about how many interesting folks have essentially stopped writing anything substantial because they’ve moved their entire intellectual presence to Twitter or Substack Notes. These are people who used to produce ten-thousand-word explorations of complex topics, and now they produce dozens of disconnected fragments per day, each one optimized for immediate engagement and none of them building toward anything coherent.
It’s like watching someone who used to compose symphonies decide to only produce ringtones. —J.A. Westenberg
2. From Bill Johnston’s “The Last Days of Mass Social Media“:
Facebook maintains 3.07 billion monthly active users, (CNBC) yet average page engagement sits at a dismal 0.06%. Instagram’s 2-3 billion users (Electro IQ) generate only 0.36-0.50% engagement—a 28% year-over-year decline. (Socialinsider) Twitter/X presents the starkest case: engagement rates have collapsed to 0.029% across industries (SocialSellinator), with users posting 38% less frequently than in 2023 (TECHSABADO) and daily active users falling from 250 million to 157 million under Musk’s ownership. Epic Owl
You can see the fallout in how people talk about social media now. Breaks are framed as recovery. Scrolling is described as a habit (doom scrolling), not a pleasure. Posting feels risky, while silence feels safer.
The open and authentic contributions aren’t slowing down because people are “disengaged”; it is because they are exhausted from being part of the social media machine. —Bill Johnston
Jean Vengua 