SOCIAL MEDIA WARS

DITCH THE TOXIC PLATFORMS!         

Dr. Muneer Muhamed and Dr. Rita McGrath spot an exodus from online anarchy

Social media was once the promised land – a shimmering digital utopia where people connected, truth flourished and democracy frolicked freely. Today, and it resembles a gladiatorial arena run by algorithms on steroids, outrage and a sense of doom.

The platforms that once promised connection and transparency now deliver misinformation, toxicity and a sense of existential dread before the sun is up.

Austrian Airlines’ dramatic ‘X-it’ isn’t simply a clever pun; it’s a mood. A growing number of brands, institutions and people are staring at their feeds and asking whether this is really how they want to spend their remaining dopamine.

The decline of social media didn’t happen overnight. It was more like a slow, awkward transformational montage – except that instead of Rocky training in the snow, it was platforms training algorithms to reward outrage, conflict and anything that could emotionally destabilise a human being in less than three seconds.

Subtlety became optional and rage became premium content.

According to think tank Pew Research, nearly 65 percent of Americans believe social media now has a negative impact on society; they cite fake news and cyberbullying as their main concerns. Translation: most people log in, feel worse, log off and then log back five minutes later because the void is louder than the reason.

Trust has eroded faster than a celebrity apology note. Shared truths have gone missing – possibly abducted by conspiracy threads – and never returned.

More concerning is that social media is now the primary news source for an estimated 62 percent of adults despite lacking the editorial standards of journalism. On today’s internet, a headline that reads ‘Breaking: experts say water is wet’ will lose to ‘This one weird thing will change your life forever!’

Accuracy is optional, ‘virality’ remains mandatory and substance has been replaced by vibes.

Mental health has entered the group chat and it isn’t doing well. Platforms such as Instagram and TikTok have achieved curated perfection that makes ordinary humans feel like underachieving potatoes.

Teenagers have been hit hardest. In The Anxious Generation, author Jonathan Haidt links smartphones and social media with rising anxiety, loneliness and self-harm. Translation: the devices that were meant to connect us are now emotionally ghosting us.

The addictive architecture of these platforms ensures that users stay engaged even when they’re unhappy. It’s more of a trap of validation, panic or comparison.

And then there’s FOMO. People are socially isolated as they spend more time with screens than with each other and algorithms are optimised for profit rather than wellbeing.

Social media has also evolved from a tech tool into a full-blown battleground for values, governance and corporate ethics. Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter (now X) proved that leadership style can reshape not only platform policies but the emotional climate of the entire internet. One billionaire, one platform – millions of migraines.

Canadian-British blogger and journalist Cory Doctorow calls this life cycle ‘enshittification,’ which is both academically valid and emotionally accurate. Platforms begin by serving users; then shift to serving advertisers; and finally, serve only themselves – almost always at the expense of everyone else.

In the end, users feel exploited, advertisers feel misled and everyone feels trapped in a digital group project they didn’t sign up for.

Enter Bluesky: the decentralised social media platform incubated by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, which is wearing a metaphorical cape made of open-source code and internet idealism.

Built on the authenticated transfer (AT) Protocol, Bluesky separates the infrastructure from the application to let users and developers build custom experiences without asking permission from a central overlord.

This is the internet’s back to basics moment – HTTP, SMTP and the radical idea that no single billionaire should own your friendships.

Bluesky distributes power instead of hoarding it. Users retain control of their data, customise their feeds and switch between apps while retaining connections – like changing cafes without losing friends or your coffee order. Its open-source nature makes it billionaire proof and is Silicon Valley’s version of garlic against vampires.

Twitter’s decline created the perfect runway for Bluesky’s ascent; and ahead of US election campaigning, its user base surged by 500 percent with over a million new users each day.

People are fleeing X due to misinformation, bots and check marks.

Shared truths have gone missing