Before most of our children were born, back in the days of Friendster, My Space and early Facebook, social media offered a welcome solution to a straightforward problem: staying in touch with people across time and space. There was a certain joy in reflecting our lives online, and in seeing our family and friends do the same. Our feeds were full of people we knew in person, whose daily business held meaning for us.

Social media promised to strengthen our existing relationships.

Fast forward to 2024, and social media is barely recognisable. Most of the content we see is created by influencers, media companies and advertisers. We follow people we don’t know and will never meet. We are willing to do all manner of things to gain followers. Those people who we do know may well be presenting lives so heavily curated and mediated that we scarcely recognise them. If you’ve not heard of Instagram Face and Instagram Boyfriend, these are definitely trends worth reading about.

Why, you might ask yourself, is this where digital technology is taking us? In short, as is so often the case, the answer comes down to economics. Faced with limited revenue streams and investors to repay, social media companies turned to advertising as a funding model. Their content selection algorithms, now run by AI, seek to maximise views, likes, shares and clicks, and the machine has rebuilt social media accordingly.

This presents us with a dilemma: do we suffer the psychological costs of staying, or the social costs of leaving?

For many, especially our young, the answer is clear: FOMO is strong, and it is better to suffer privately and excel publicly. But, for a growing number of us, it seems that the costs are no longer worth bearing. What might it be like to live a life less social (media)? There’s only one way to find out…