Op-Ed: Social media is killing itself, says Incogni

Incogni.com is best known for a product range designed to get people out of the pitfalls of an online presence. Now it’s made a point for both itself and an online culture based on incredible levels of user dissatisfaction.

An Incogni blog called The great digital fatigue: How digital burnout is changing social media use has pinned down the problems with even having an online presence. The decades-old great marketing go-to of social media is actually reducing participation and increasing disconnection.

You need to read this blog for full extrapolation, but the Key Insights intro section will do as a true indictment of social media in its current form.

Roughly 50% of respondents to Incogni’s sample reduced posting, restricted access to their posts, and deleted social media accounts.

Privacy and security were major issues for many respondents.

Political content was a major turnoff for respondents.

Gen Z in particular doesn’t like the “work” aspect of having an online presence.  

The generational gap between Gen Z. Millennials, Gen X. and Boomers showed everyone but the Boomers more or less on the same page regarding online presence, and the Boomers are only slightly less stressed.

This type of age demographic is used to define markets. It can also be used as an indicator for future trends. The overall push of the Incogni data is in direct conflict with the established norms of online marketing.

Disconnection clearly isn’t the big deal it was. A rough average fifth of users reported discomfort, FOMO, peace, relaxation, and forms of anxiety and discomfort. That does mean that 80% of users can take or leave it. The exception was Gen Z, with higher negative responses to disconnection.

Cultural context

These findings are a huge turnaround from the heyday of social media. X, infested with bots, delivers mixed messages about actual user stats. Its user base has stabilized, but its profile has diminished in the face of user backlash against political content as described by Incogni.

These political bots are delivering a tide of tangential issues, particularly AI bots, with ChatGPT and other chatbots suspected of political bias. The runup to the US midterms has apparently added fuel to the cultural backlash.

The added “culture” of the bots has introduced high levels of hate speech, bullying, porn, and other effluvia into an increasingly hostile, apathetic, environment. The rise and fall of Twitter is aptly cited as a corrupted version of itself compared to its previous questionable but at least credible cultural status.  

Quality standards for content have crashed and continue to crash. The prim facades of presentation have almost nothing in common with actual content values. Is it any wonder that users are turning off?

There’s also the question of whether the arbiters of content understand what they’re seeing. The Google Search Quality Rater Guidelines are a case in point. It’s based on the “purpose” of a page. These ratings are the basis of search rankings, based on perceived user needs. Now check any search you like and try to define how well your needs are being met.

Others, like the well-known Trustpilot, deliver reviews, to meet a need for verification. Trustpilot gets a lot of flak for its reviews. Manipulation of credibility is the main cultural issue. Like the X bots, Cambridge Analytica, and general disinformation, so many reviews are flagged for being manipulative.

Is it any wonder that Incogni’s survey reflects such high dissatisfaction with a decade or so of decay?  The value of social media, and the broader question of online presence, is all about trust.

“Meeting needs” or just annoying people who know better?

There’s an old rule of thumb in advertising that says that about 95% of advertising is instantly ignored. It’s not useful unless it’s interesting. People don’t bother to look.

Online, that’s a killer metric. Nobody has to look at anything online. Your content can be obliterated with a blink. Social media is now reaching that point. The novelty has definitely worn off, and the other negative factors are major disincentives to users.

Nobody’s needs are being “met” by babbling bots. Non-existent people contribute no value. Social media is deluding itself by tolerating inflated numbers that mean nothing. That is truly appalling form any marketing perspective. It’s a massive own goal for social media as a whole.

Disconnecting from social media is now a newsworthy substrate of the realities of social media. This isn’t the old “too much screen time”. It’s a mental health issue. It’s a legitimate detox topic. The “advertising reflex” is now being applied to mass media by people who know a lot better and the trends are unmistakable.

AI slop and beyond

Not mentioned in the Incogni findings but waddling over the horizon is a future disincentive in the form of AI’s contributions to the world. The near-unanimous uproar over substandard AI slop content is deafening.

People turn off. Participation is pointless. It wastes time and causes stress. It even diminishes real business for artists and diverts money from legitimate businesses.

Social media is the biggest global marketing environment. Every business venture, every new product, must have some sort of market profile, and social media is supposed to be the solution.

If nearly 50% of users are dropping out and more are probably thinking of dropping out, what happens? A useful market tool is lost. Customers are harder to reach. The social media platforms are ghost towns with meaningless user stats.

It’s user experience, UX, that’s doing the damage. Social media does eliminate huge numbers of bots and does try to moderate.

The only viable business metric for fixing social media is good UX. Fix that, and you’ve fixed the problems.