Social media wasn’t always like this. I think back to the ways I used Twitter, Facebook and Instagram in the early days and they were completely different than they way they are used today. They were personal, real time, and no one cared about “likes”.
I think a lot of the problems with social media today could be solved just by removing “the numbers.” If suddenly all the like, follower, following, and comment counts disappeared I suspect people would use these things fundamentally differently. I see people browsing through IG tapping to like for 20 minutes at a time and think to myself, “why are you even doing that?” It’s a compulsion that does nothing.
I think a lot of the problems with social media today could be solved just by removing “the numbers.” If suddenly all the like, follower, following, and comment counts disappeared I suspect people would use these things fundamentally differently. I see people browsing through IG tapping to like for 20 minutes at a time and think to myself, “why are you even doing that?” It’s a compulsion that does nothing.