When Social Media Stopped Being Social. The End of an Era.

We all signed up for social media to connect. To share moments with friends, keep in touch, and maybe post the occasional embarrassing photo. But in 2025, even Meta admits that personal social networking doesn’t really exist anymore.

The feeds we scroll aren’t about friendship, they’re about content.

From Friends to Feeds

Back in the day, Facebook was your digital yearbook. You added friends, posted updates, and stalked crushes. Now, if you log in, you’re hit with a mix of ads, celebrity reels, and random accounts you never followed.

Meta even tested showing people more friend posts, and engagement dropped. But when they leaned harder into algorithm-driven video, users stuck around. The message is clear: connection doesn’t keep us hooked, content does.

The TikTok Effect

TikTok’s For You Page flipped the entire game. Suddenly, it wasn’t about who you knew but what the algorithm thought you wanted. Meta scrambled to keep up, launching Reels and throwing hundreds of millions at creators just to fill your feed.

The numbers tell the story:

• Only 7% of time on Instagram is spent on friends’ posts.

• Facebook? Just 17%.

• Half of young new users don’t add a single friend after three months.

Social media? It’s now more like “content media.”

Where Did the Social Go?

For Gen Z and young millennials, keeping up with friends happens in group chats, Discord servers, and private communities, not the feed. The main platforms have become digital stages where influencers, brands, and AI-generated content compete for attention.

And that’s where the cracks are showing. When half the posts you see aren’t even from people you know, is it really “social” at all?

The Bottom Line - End of Social Media

Meta wants us to believe the future is smart glasses and hyper-immersive digital worlds. Maybe. But more likely, the next shift in online connection won’t come from algorithms, it’ll come from rethinking how we connect as humans.

Here’s the truth: every cycle eventually resets. We went from MySpace → Facebook → Instagram → TikTok, and the pendulum will swing again. People are already tired of doomscrolling.

The next big thing probably won’t look like today’s algorithm-driven apps.

It’ll look more like connection reimagined.

In the end, social media as we knew it is gone. The question now is: what replaces it?.... Socialode.