Young adults are rejecting the likes of TikTok and Facebook. That’s a good thing.

The social media boom continues to attract attention. But it is a contradictory boom.<br><br>While social media stocks have soared in 2023, business failures have proliferated. Meta’s Instagram Reels is an unqualified flop. Mark Zuckerberg has acknowledged this by describing it as “not doing well”, a euphemism for a flop. YouTube Shorts is doing no better. Twitter has been a complete disaster since Elon Musk took over. SnapChat has been a raging success as a money losing business, which is all the excuse that investors need to mark its shares down.<br><br>And yet, even as social media businesses fail or otherwise fall short of expectations, social media usage will continue to boom. This may seem counterintuitive. The reality is that there is a major shift in the social media landscape, one that is entirely welcome.<br><br>Much of the commentary about social media is based on the wrong metrics. The number of monthly active users a business has is often put forward as proof of its fundamental health. In reality, this metric tells us almost nothing. But there is another metric, which is far more revealing and is based on what the users are doing.<br><br>This week, Facebook published user numbers for the first time since June 2022. Usage of the platform has stalled, with 2.1 billion monthly active users and daily use running at 2 billion.<br><br>TikTok’s user numbers are not broken out in the same way, but we can form a good idea of what is happening there by looking at another metric. This is the amount of time that users spend on the platform. Today, they spend 53 minutes a day, which is a lot but a lot less than they used to.<br><br>Instagram Reels is doing a little better, with 3.7 billion views daily.<br><br>YouTube Shorts is doing well, with two billion daily views.<br><br>The real winner in all of this is Snapchat. Users spend 44 minutes a day viewing the app, which has 418 million users worldwide.<br><br>But the undoubted winner of them all is Discord. This is an app where users hang out, create communities and chat. A lot. Usage has soared in 2023, to 290 million monthly active users.<br><br>People are turning to Discord because it is a different kind of social media. It’s not algorithmic, it’s intuitive to use and it doesn’t try to sell you anything.<br><br>Younger users are turning to a new type of social media that isn’t social media at all. They’re turning to apps that are fundamentally different from the traditional social media platforms.<br><br>The social media boom is here to stay. But it’s changing beyond recognition.<br><br>“Growing numbers of younger people are abandoning old social media platforms in favour of newer, more discreet ones that do not sell their information to advertisers or abuse their attention for profit. Today, the likes of TikTok and Facebook are not where the action is. The names of TikTok, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram will be familiar to anyone who has used social media. Few, if any, of these make money.<br><br>And the newer social media companies? These make even less money. BeReal and MySpace might be youthful and lively but they continue to burn cash at a prodigious rate. So too does Snapchat. For young people today, the new social media is fundamentally different from traditional social media. No, the attention economy is pivoting towards a new type of social media that is younger than the original social media platforms, more discreet, more intuitive and more enjoyable to use.<br><br>It is welcome.<br><br>As the veteran American journalist and academic Cathy O’Neil notes, the idea of infinite growth is a lie: the only thing that is infinite is the planet and everything on it. The idea of infinite growth is a lie - and it’s one that has driven the social media sector. But there’s another side to it.<br><br>The infinite growth machine has made us do the things that it wants and has made us miserable in the process. We are now rejecting it. That’s a good thing.<br><br>Covert advertising in social media is ubiquitous. The advertising is designed to be hidden in a constant stream of content. Viewers are not necessarily aware of the advertising, yet it is designed to alter our behaviour.<br><br>This is why we need to be aware of it. It is why we need to know it exists and to understand the techniques it uses to manipulate us. Once we know what is happening, we can take steps to protect ourselves.<br><br>But it is not easy. This is where a new type of social media is coming to the fore.<br><br>For young people today, traditional social media is dead. BeReal, Caffeine, Discord and MySpace are now the platforms that they use. None of these platforms encourages infinite scrolling. Indeed, most are deliberately designed to be difficult to use for a long time. Woe betide any younger person who likes to spend hours on social media. They will be singled out, shamed and ridiculed by their friends. Younger people today want to be on their phones and socialise - but only for short periods. It is entirely welcome.<br><br>Much of the commentary about social media is based on the wrong metrics. The number of monthly active users a business has is often put forward as proof of its fundamental health. In reality, this metric tells us almost nothing.<br><br>But there is another metric, which is far more revealing and is based on what the users are doing.<br><br>The amount of time that users spend on a platform is a much more revealing metric. YouTube Shorts, owned by Alphabet, is the most used platform. Users spend a lot of time on the app, with an average of 183 minutes each month, or six minutes a day.<br><br>The second most popular social media platform is Instagram Reels, with an average of 134 minutes per user each month. This was the only platform to see user engagement decline in 2023. It still remains the most used social media platform in the United States.<br><br>TikTok is next at 122 minutes per user. TikTok’s user numbers are not broken out in the same way, but we can form a good idea of what is happening there by looking at another metric. This is the amount of time that users spend on the platform. Today, they spend 53 minutes a day, which is a lot but a lot less than they used to.<br><br>Snapchat is the fourth most used social media platform, with average user time coming in at 73 minutes per user.<br><br>Twitter rounds out the top five. Users here spend just 44 minutes per user per month.<br><br>So, what is the best social media platform? To find this out, we can multiply the number of users by the user time. In other words, we can look at the total amount of time spent by all users on an app.<br><br>On this metric, YouTube Shorts is the most used social media platform. Then comes TikTok, Instagram Reels, Snapchat and Twitter. <br><br>What’s happening is a major shift in the social media landscape, one that is entirely welcome.<br><br>Younger people today are rejecting the likes of TikTok and Facebook. They’re turning to a new type of social media that puts user engagement and user experience first and foremost. They’re turning to a type of social media that is discreet, more intuitive and more enjoyable to use.<br><br>They’re turning to social media apps where people hang out, create communities and chat. A lot. They’re turning to a social media landscape that is no longer toxic or abusive. They’re turning to a social media landscape where the algorithms used to pervert democracy are now more discreet.<br><br>For young people today, social media is a new type of social media that is younger than Facebook and Instagram and TikTok, more discreet, more intuitive and more enjoyable to use. But there’s another side to it.<br><br>The infinite growth machine has made us do what it wants and made us miserable in the process. We are now rejecting it. That’s a good thing.<br><br>So, what would social media look like if it was younger, more discreet, more enjoyable to use - and pivoted away from infinite growth?<br><br>In that case, the social media companies that would thrive are the newer social media ones, such as BeReal, Caffeine, Discord and MySpace. These are younger than Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and Twitter. They’re also more discreet, more enjoyable to use and far less toxic. Few of these make money.<br><br>When it comes to technology, the future is always immanent. It is here now. Few of these make money - but so what? Viewed by this metric, the best social media companies are the ones that are young, discreet and enjoyable to use and which pivot away from infinite growth.<br><br>The big social media boom is here to stay. But it’s changing beyond recognition.<br><br>It will stay whether we like it or not. But today, it is pivoting towards a more discreet and more enjoyable type of social media, one where people hang out, create communities and chat. A lot.