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| Mark Zuckerberg (left) and Elon Musk (right) (Image: NY Post) |
I am feeling bold by sharing a prediction I've had in my mind up until recently - unless the social media chiefs clean up their act, by 2030, their channels will be no more. No more Facebook, X or TikTok to spend minutes upon minutes to scroll endless videos, news stories and other updates. At present, supposedly billions of us around the world dedicate our spare time to subconsciously checking our phones for social media notifications. I'm suggesting that the days of doing this are numbered.
I make this prediction with a heavy heart. When it was first coined about 25 years ago, 'Web 2.0' - or 'social web' to some - was actually a very good idea - connecting with loved ones in an instant, no matter how far away or close by they are, as well as keeping up-to-date with what's going on with the world without having to spend precious pennies on a newspaper. Everything you wanted on your fingertips. It has also helped shape my professional life, having been a significant feature in my journalism undergraduate degree and later when I got into public relations, which its roles and responsibilities are widening by the day.
In recent years, social media sites have grown exponentially, focusing on expanding controversial corporate and deepening political ties, while in doing so, arguably ignoring the impact these are having on individual users and wider society. For a long time, this has worked in terms of their profit margins and they have enabled career launches of many 'influencers'. However, there is a distinctive dark side to these channels that has gotten so toxic, sooner rather than later, their hard work could soon be dramatically reversed unless they get their acts together.
We are seeing this happen with X, led by Elon Musk. He took over Twitter in October 2022, rebranded it, and promised big changes which completely divided opinion. On the one hand, those who believed in the myth that is 'cancel culture', felt it was the 'much-needed return of free speech', others, myself included, feared the worse given his volatile profile. You can argue that he's lived up to both expectations, offering highly controversial figures, previously banned from the platform, a return - Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, founder of the English Defence League (EDL), being one of them. And when their extreme views appear front and centre of users' feeds, it's human nature to respond with equally extreme views from the other side of a given argument.
Users have noticed how X puts the 'x' in 'toxic'. When it was Twitter, while it couldn't grapple with the rising number of bots, most of us knew, at least, that they were bots responding to our posts, so we could laugh it off, report and move on. That isn't a guarantee on X when it's real people who are replying in an intolerable way. Musk leads that culture where anything goes, and this is not resonating with the masses, with more and more people reportedly disconnecting their accounts.
Unfortunately, it isn't just X acting in this way. Meta, which owns WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram, recently announced that it no longer will operate the 'fact-checker' function, which enabled people to report contentious posts that contained mistruths or misinformation. This could open the door for 'fake news' and updates generated by Artificial Intelligence (AI) to be mixed in with the genuine posts. For a platform where users rely on reliable stories about what's going on with the world, it's a big blow.
What's a bigger blow is that the antics, led by Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, Meta's chief, are politically motivated. Musk has been long known as a supporter of Donald Trump and other political figures of a similar ilk - and he's certainly used his situation to powerful effect, driving agendas, influencing democracies, and a job in the US Government. Zuckerberg has noticed this and perhaps felt that the best economic decision for him and Meta was to follow suit. And it only took $1 million to get in Trump's good books and on 20th January 2025, when he was inaugurated as the 47th President of the United States, he did it with the leaders of the two social media giants by his side (pictured above). When we thought social media got 'too political' before, that event had taken that opinion to a whole new level.
Organisations should, generally, never choose sides in politics, that's basic economics. It is normal and good practice to lobby a certain policy, if they know that doing so would benefit customers, stakeholders and shareholders. But, never to endorse individuals or parties. It's too risky, knowing how divisive of a decision that could be.
Trump being in the White House has simply just stalled social media's general decline. Just before he was inaugurated, the previous administration under Joe Biden shut TikTok down in the United States on 'national security' grounds (it was apparently strongly linked with the Chinese Government). One of Trump's first actions was to reactive it on American soil, much to the relief of its millions of users in the country. But it's a warning sign - involve yourself with politics will land you in hot water. One wonders if other countries would be brave enough to ban X due to Musk's involvement in Trump's administration. In the UK, companies were rightly shouted at by the public and media for getting key multi-million pound contracts during the Covid-19 pandemic due to their chief executives being chummy with political figures. The same should, surely, apply to social media companies, no matter how much we think we rely on them in our daily lives.
The more these platforms get away with this unjustified behaviour, the more disenfranchised people will be with companies who are 'meant to be on our side' and instead 'embracing corporate greed'. Although I am a strong believer in the good social media can bring, I will equally throw my weight in supporting anyone who wants to make sure they improve. For example, I fully endorse those courageous families who are currently suing TikTok for their role in promoting content inappropriate for teenagers. The general mental health of impressionable young people has been under serious scrutiny since social media has become the mainstream, and it won't get any better unless governments got a grip on these channels.
Unless the sector is regulated in multiple countries, social media channels will continue to go rogue. And should these governments they're supporting fall apart, and the voters who backed them also lose belief, those platforms will only crumble. A level of maturity is needed so they can continue thriving in a way that suits the majority. In the UK, newspapers continue to be resilient despite sharply declining reader numbers, and are surviving today because they're being closely monitored and are learning their lessons from the phone hacking scandal that crippled the industry. Heck, papers are far from perfect, but if it wasn't for the expose of News of the World, I don't feel any of the tabloids or broadsheets would have survived. Social media will soon reach that stage if not careful.
All Musk, Zuckerberg and the like need to do is drop their egos, not worry about losing their relevance and bring back the true essence of social media. As these chiefs are egotistical, insecure and ignorant, it'll be impossible for them to change. Trump floundering will knock them down a peg or two but regardless of his fate in the next 3-4 years, for society's sake, social media companies need to get their acts together, or they'll crash and the world could be all the better for it.
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