Will social media die as we retreat into the safety of private networks?

Will social media die as we retreat into the safety of private networks?

In real life, few of us would think it was acceptable to turn up outside a stranger’s house and yell insults at them in the dead of night.

Yet people are logging on to social networks every day with the express intention of shouting abuse at people they’ll probably never meet.

Social media has profoundly changed the way we interact with each other and created a global space in which anyone can make their voice heard.

It’s also allowed people to attack, torment and manipulate other humans in a manner which would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.




Now there are signs that people are getting fed up of gigantic platforms with billions of users and retreating into ‘niche social networks’ (like Everyme or Nextdoor) or talking with friends in encrypted spaces (like Slack or Telegram) no-one else can access without permission.

This is a trend which has already been noticed by Mark Zuckerberg himself. He recently announced a privacy-focused vision for the future of Facebook.

Earlier this year, the billionaire data baron said Facebook has become the ‘digital equivalent of a town square’ but it was changing.

‘People increasingly also want to connect privately in the digital equivalent of the living room,’ he said.

‘As I think about the future of the internet, I believe a privacy-focused communications platform will become even more important than today’s open platforms.

‘Privacy gives people the freedom to be themselves and connect more naturally, which is why we build social networks.’

In the coming years, it’s likely that demand for private social networks will continue to grow as we seek to hide from trolls, cybercriminals and shadowy manipulators.

‘Over the last few years we have witnessed a move away from public to more private sharing through WhatsApp, Snapchat and Facebook Messenger,’ Mark Brill, senior lecturer in future media at Birmingham City University, says.

Mark Zuckerberg delivers his keynote speech at the F8 2019 conference (Image: Facebook)

‘The evidence is that this trend to private social media will continue.

‘It has been driven by a number of factors from trolling to privacy concerns, but helped by the ease of messaging apps to create groups of friends.

‘Users tend to congregate in the channels where their peers are – in the last few years that has been in WhatsApp and Snapchat.’

‘While impossible to predict how this will impact on the future, we know that the social media channels will evolve as their audiences change. Facebook, for example, have adjusted their feed algorithm to include more content from friends and less from brands. It is unlikely to be the death of social media as we know it.

‘Similarly, the greater influence on public discourse is unlikely to change. Social media channels such as Facebook still command massive audiences and those that want to share causes and issues publicly will continue to do so.’



Data collected by the Pew Research Centre has showed that social media user growth is plateauing among most age groups.

Twitter’s active users actually declined in the US in 2017 whilst teenagers are either leaving Facebook in droves or are becoming ‘Facebook-nevers’ having never signed up to the platform.

‘While the idea that social media could go out of fashion or that popular sites could suddenly disappear may seem unthinkable, it’s possible to discern the beginnings of another radical change bubbling under the surface,’ Alex Warren, author of Technoutopia: How Optimism Ruined The Internet, says.

‘Social media platforms are in significant turmoil, and consumers grow increasingly distrustful of the information they read online.

‘Could these struggles chip away at the apparent permanence of the social media giants and raise the prospect of a “postsocial media” age?

‘Indeed, at the niche end of the market new social media sites appear and disappear almost every day – how long is it until the reaper comes knocking for the big boys?

We shouldn’t sound the death knell for Twitter, Facebook or Instagram just yet though.

A major argument to predict the continued success of public social media platforms is simple egotism.

This would be harder to do in private spaces which have a limited audience.

Right now, if you’ve spent a lot of time at the gym, you’re going to want to show off on Instagram. When you’re promoted, it’s straight to LinkedIn. And if you’re feeling popular and loved, it’s probably time to show off on Facebook.


Sam Tatam, consulting partner at the advertising firm Ogilvy’s consulting behavioural science practice, said the deadly sin of vanity is one reason why social media is not about to die.

‘While more private channels like WhatsApp are certainly picking up speed, the assumption that it’s inevitable for people to shift completely to encrypted spaces assumes that the only reason people use social media is to “transact” information,’ he says.

‘To help explain, consider this: unless you’re in the army, there’s no rational reason to buy a Hummer jeep.

‘It doesn’t change getting from A to B but instead signals wealth, success and “fitness” to others in a way that’s not dissimilar to the flamboyant tail of a male peacock. This is what evolutionary biologists would call a “costly signal”.

‘Take the recent Notre Dame tragedy as an example.

‘My hunch is that for every private WhatsApp message there was an Instagram or Facebook throwback depicting glorious summer escapades in Paris that just so happened to be in front of the stunning cathedral, as was widely reported in the press.

‘Similar to our Hummer, this is a virtue or social signalling exercise that benefits from a mass audience more so than a transactional personal message of sadness and despair.

‘When we think about social communications in the future, it’s important we remember that the medium plays just as important a role as is the message itself, and the desired signal can be very different to what is actually said.’

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But regardless of whether we retreat into private spaces or brave the slings and arrows of public social networks, one thing remains certain: the future probably belongs to Facebook.


‘Facebook owns Instagram and WhatsApp, so these platforms are not alternatives to dominant social media – they are Facebook satellites,’ Dr Zoetanya Sujon, of the London College of Communication, says.

‘Facebook changed its mission statement in 2017 from “making the world more open and connected” to one that actively prioritised groups so users could “build community and bring the world closer together”.

‘Here we can see that Facebook changed its central priority so it could better capitalise on the ways users were already using Facebook. Very few online spaces (and virtually no social media) are actually private. Between the “product families” making up most social media platforms and the army of tools used for personalisation, every click leads to the collection and storage of personal data.

‘This results in a massive social database made accessible to anyone willing to pay the right price – including advertisers and governments.

‘The future here is not about social media, but about capitalism.

‘Social media is the engine of data and surveillance capitalism, and this engine is fuelled by personal data collection.’

Until the world turns up outside Mark Zuckerberg’s house and protest for change, chances are that users will be keeping their objections private, in every sense of the word.

The Future Of Everything This piece is part of Metro.co.uk's series The Future Of Everything. From OBEs to CEOs, professors to futurologists, economists to social theorists, politicians to multi-award winning academics, we think we had the future covered, away from the doom-mongering or easy Minority Report references. Every week, we explained what's likely (or not likely) to happen. Talk to us using the hashtag #futureofeverything. Though the series is no longer weekly, if you think we might have missed something vital to the future, get in touch: hey@metro.co.uk or Alex.Hudson@metro.co.uk Read every Future Of Everything story