Last month, the number of daily active users on Facebook fell for the first time in its eighteen-year history
(Picture: Becca Tapert)Sophie Cobbold, a 36-year-old yoga teacher has never used social media. She has fifteen clients, all of whom are word-of-mouth recommendations. “If I joined Instagram I’d have more,” she admits. “But I’m resistant. I’ve come this far without it. My approach is much slower but more authentic.”
Cobbold may have been an early adopter but if recent figures are anything to go by, more of us than ever have begun to move away from social platforms and even superstar influencers like Selena Gomez who rely on the exposure are over it — in a recent interview she said she hasn’t been on Instagram for over four years. Last month, the number of daily active users on Facebook fell for the first time in its eighteen-year history. Its owner, Meta, saw shares plummet by over 20 percent and – as if sensing the oncoming sea change in user opinions – investors in other platforms became skittish too, with the likes of Twitter also seeing a slump in share value.
At the same time, there’s been an uptick in the use of so-called ‘dumb phones’ – basic mobiles that don’t even try to be smart. No internet, no apps, no endless scroll, the joy of these phones – or so users would have us believe – is that they allow us to live an (almost) disconnected life. One of the most popular is the $300, Light Phone; the size of a credit card, it allows users to make and receive calls via a simple black and white interface, and comes with a list of optional ‘add ons’ that includes an alarm and maps – but, crucially, nothing with a ‘feed’.
Light – the company who invented the phone – has the same backers as Gwenth Paltrow’s Goop and is one of a growing number of luxury brands operating in today’s privacy economy. For Cobbold, who has been teaching yoga for seven years and works from her home studio in the Cotswolds, devices like the Light Phone make perfect sense. She acknowledges that her social life would have been easier with social media, admits to having looked at Instagram via friends’ accounts but says: “I already feel that I’m not present enough for my children as even my phone takes up too much space in my life.”
The Light Phone is joined by the likes of White Canvas, whose clients – many of whom are celebrities – will pay up to £5000 a month to have their online presence minimised, cleaned or deleted. This involves erasing images, videos and moving articles around – as well as a constant monitoring of key words associated with the client. “If we can’t erase it, we control it but we don’t make stuff up and we don’t do fake news,” says CEO, Marco Juffermans. "We make people the best version of themselves online."
Signs of our discontent with digital platforms have been apparent for some time. Aside from the well-document negative impact on mental health, as far back as 2019, findings from the YouGov-Cambridge Globalism Project, which surveyed 25,000 people globally found that a mere 12% of Britons trusted information from social media (83% said they had little or no trust in the platforms). And that distrust has only gotten worse as disinformation – fed to us via our social media feeds – has become an ever-present spectre haunting our political landscapes. Most recently, anti-misinformation outlet NewsGuard found that a new account joining TikTok today would be funelled towards false or misleading information about the war in Ukraine within 40 minutes of being on the app. “Some of the myths in the videos TikTok’s algorithm fed to analysts have previously been identified as Kremlin propaganda,” the researchers said, by the organisation’s Russia-Ukraine Disinformation Tracking Center – these included ‘deep-fake’ photoshopped videos that the average user would struggled to identify as not real.
Manveer Nirwan, 37, was always sceptical about social media – but the Ukraine-Russia conflict has brought to life his worst fears. “The government controls state media in Russia – and China is just as powerful – so with the resources they have they can generate fake content that is incredibly hard to verify and very realistic which is terrifying.”
At University in the mid 2000s, he joined High Five – an early social media platform just for photos: no messaging, no liking, you created a profile and uploaded your pictures. “At some point it got seedy,” he says. “Blokes you didn’t know friend-requesting you so they could get access to your mates’ photos – to look at girls. I thought ‘forget this’.”
Then, in 2006, Facebook came along. Nirwan had an unsettling feeling that this was the same sort of thing but dressed-up differently. He felt it was intrusive and despite pressure from friends, didn’t join. Over the years he stuck to his guns about this and the other platforms, and it’s a choice he felt increasingly vindicated by.
In 2018 the Cambridge Analytica scandal revealed how the Facebook data of some 84 million people had been harvested and used to target advertising during elections. “It was pretty insane,” says Nirwan, who has worked in the police and in security services in warzones which has since contributed to his anti-social media stance. “How many other companies were doing this? We are the commodity – the implications are huge.”
Despite feeling that he is morally in the right, he says that he does still feel lonely sometimes because his friends tend to communicate on social media: “I don’t know anyone else in my situation – and no one can understand why you’re not on it.”
He recalls being on a camping trip with friends and everyone was engrossed in their phones. “I was the only one happy staring at the sunset,” he says.
For those not on social media, the ability to live in the moment seems to be neither prized nor applauded – it is simply taken for granted. But many are aware that this makes them elusive, rare creatures in a world of chronic oversharing.
“There is something enigmatic about not having social media,” says Joe Street, a 35-year-old TV producer who quit socials three years ago.
“I woke up to the fact that people probably wouldn’t care about my posts and in the end we are all caught up in a vacuous machine of posting everything we do because it is the new ‘norm’.” He doesn’t miss it at all, instead he feels relieved – like he is living in the moment.
I woke up to the fact that people probably wouldn’t care about my posts and in the end we are all caught up in a vacuous machine of posting everything we do because it is the new ‘norm’
“One of the major benefits for me not being on social is also being unaware of everything that is going on in people’s lives, so when you see them it is genuinely nice to hear about what they have been up to without having to say ‘oh yes I saw you tried that new burger place’.”
While Street doesn’t judge those who are on social media, he is frustrated by how many real life gatherings are dominated by capturing or keeping up with content.
“I do get annoyed with people when you’re having a really nice moment and the phone comes out for a quick snap just so they can show the ‘gram they are having a good day,” he says.
Street admits that there is a degree of smugness that comes with not being on social media but that, he says, is largely because of other people’s overwhelmingly positive reactions when they hear about it.
“You are often met with ‘oh wow well done’ or ‘that’s amazing, good for you’ which makes me realise just how aware people are that it isn’t actually that good for you,” he says.
“I am also the first person people contact when they have deleted an app because it’s like they want the acknowledgment of their achievement. I am the last person they tell when they are back on the app because then they would be shining a light on how they’ve essentially ‘fallen off the wagon’.”
For Street one of the most unfortunate things about the dominance of social media is the loss of mystery in industries which once held exclusivity so dear.
“I do ask myself, if they had social media in the golden age of Hollywood, would we really admire Marilyn Monroe or James Dean if we saw what they had for breakfast or watched them open a parcel from a brand giving them free teeth whitening strips? Probably not.”
A few of Hollywood’s biggest stars have shunned social media – Kate Winslet and Daniel Radcliffe among them – ostensibly because of moral or personal reasons but also probably because they simply don’t need the promotion. “I think everyone should have some sort of mystery about them,” says Street. “I am a huge Madonna fan and I grew up thinking she was the most interesting artist in the world who would come out every couple of years with a new image and a new controversy before disappearing again and leaving me wanting more. Social media has totally ruined that for me because if I wanted I could go on social media and watch the numerous posts from any popstar or film star throughout the day. The Queen of Reinvention can’t reinvent if you have twenty-four seven access to her.”
For Nirwan, the problems thrown up by social media aren’t just about the impact on the individual. The meme-ification of everything, which can be as entertaining as it is lazy, is something he finds especially problematic. “You have any incident or political issue or death or Covid and people are instantly spreading memes and getting a laugh,” he says. “You get bombarded by memes about really serious topical issues and people think it’s funny. I don’t understand how that is good for society and making young minds think this is something to be laughed at instead of mourned. Why are people sending memes of [the war in Ukraine] when people are dying? It’s horrific.”
I am a huge Madonna fan ....but the Queen of Reinvention can’t reinvent if you have twenty-four seven access to her
When Cobbold was single her friends would offer to look her dates up first on social media – and she was horrified. “Don’t look them up – don’t write someone off because of shoes he wore in a photo on Instagram.” This sentiment is seeming less and less quaint as more of us become tired with the endless scroll. It’s clear that we are waking up to the fact that social media – on micro and macro levels – is often bad for us. But while there are those who have abstained and won’t ever give in, for most of us the process of divorcing from our online personas is only just beginning.
