Social Media Just Doesn’t Feel The Way It Used To, And Experts Explain Why

We’ve spoken about the rise of AI slop content on the internet, and as of recently, reports have found that there are officially more bots than there are humans online.

For context, there are currently about 6 billion humans online – that’s just over 70% of the world’s population! So, having that number exceeded by bots brings such a chilling feeling.

Social media is one of the main places where bots are active. I have been an internet and social media user since about 2011, and lately, I’ve been feeling really dissatisfied with the online experience. Bots certainly play a huge part in why social media doesn’t feel the same, but there’s something else I picked up…

How Are Users Changing The Social Media Experience?

It started when I watched a video that I quite enjoyed (at first). But then, I opened the comment section and realised that the user was selling something all along. Granted, it was very smart selling, but something about realising only afterwards that a video I heavily related to was just a sales pitch left me feeling slightly robbed.

I noticed this style of video started to become more and more popular on social media as the pandemic e-commerce rush became trendy, and the format is the same: find a captivating hook, tell a story that feels close to home, quickly sneak in a product or service you sell, and finish the video.

From a business perspective, it’s brilliant. But what if “business” is making the social media experience less about connecting with people and more about selling to them? Every piece of engagement feels transactional, and interactions are no longer wholesome.

How Are Social Media Platforms Changing The Experience?

The platforms themselves also play a role here. I am quickly reminded of the first time Instagram removed its chronological feed structure a few years ago. Users complained when the feature changed because now their friends’ and family members’ content would not be the first thing they saw, and this really slowed genuine engagement.

When platforms like TikTok came about and introduced feeds where random content showed up (usually more often than content from your friends), with the “Friends” feed being separate, people started to engage less with the people they were in community with. Once again, interactions became meaningless, and people began to engage with strangers with less sincere intentions. The bullying became more frequent once users realised that there was no real consequence for leaving a rude comment on a stranger’s page.

This goes hand in hand with the rise of “rage bait” content. This is essentially content that is created to deliberately upset or provoke people for the sake of engagement. When engagement is currency on social media, more people naturally become desperate for it.

While social media apps do have policies and moderators in place, they do not quite prevent a lot of this from occurring. It also feels as though the platforms are now designing these apps with engagement in mind: the more people stay on the apps, the more ads generate revenue for them.

I am a long-time social media user who also happens to research and report on such changes, but I also wanted to hear more expert opinions on why social media just isn’t the same. This is what they’ve shared…

Our Experts:

• Natalia Bassova, Licensed Real Estate Agent & Owner, Resort Real Estate Inc.
• Sahil Gandhi, Brand Strategist, Brand Professor
• Dr. Nir Baharav, Psychologist, OCD/Anxiety Specialist, Dr. Nir Baharav
• James Halder, Director, Sonar Seed
• Petra Smith, Founder, Squirrels & Bears
• Allan Dabre, Technology Compliance & AI Lead, PricewaterhouseCoopers Advisory (PwC)
• Cache Merrill, Founder, Zibtek

Natalia Bassova, Licensed Real Estate Agent & Owner, Resort Real Estate Inc.

“One reason is that today, there is greater emphasis placed upon using an algorithm to determine what people view rather than what type of relationship they have with the source. For example, you could potentially follow all of your close friends, local businesses, and trusted professionals; yet the first thing you see when you open your app may not be anything related to them. This change alone contributes significantly to social media feeling less like a natural community and more like a constant stream of content designed to get your attention.

“Also, building trust online is much harder. With everything appearing polished and perfect online, users start questioning what is true and what is simply presented perfectly. As a real estate agent, I still find that clients want to engage in honest conversation, receive knowledge about their community, and desire one-on-one assistance when purchasing a new home. They understand that finding a new home is not solely based upon what something may look like on a computer screen, but rather finding a new home that fits into their lifestyle.”

Sahil Gandhi, Brand Strategist, Brand Professor

“Social media changed and didn’t change. Instead of the incentives changing to being watched to being seen, the early days rewarded being real online.

“Today, every post is compared to the highlights of everyone else doing their best version of real, and you’re now doing battle with a highlight reel, not a real person.

“It’s the exact same trend that Sahil sees in the world of branding. The instant a product or brand starts to optimize for approval rather than connection, it stops feeling human, even though the posts may now look more polished. No longer a friendly, warm group, now it feels like a glam show. People don’t leave social media because it declined. People left social media because it stopped being social, for the right reasons.”
 

Dr. Nir Baharav, Psychologist, OCD/Anxiety Specialist, Dr. Nir Baharav

“Most people who tell me social media feels different from how it did before aren’t really telling me about the difference in how they use the platform.

“It’s more that they’re saying something has changed inside of themselves.

“Checking used to be a source of connection for most people.

“Today, checking is just another thing on someone’s to-do list that they feel unable to avoid.

“I hear this all the time when I’m seeing new patients with anxiety issues, we end up spending the entire session talking about their phones.

“There hasn’t been a huge shift in the apps themselves; rather, it seems our tolerance for being interrupted has simply worn off.

“When a patient says that a habit no longer brings them joy, but they still find themselves reaching for it whenever they want to, I don’t tell my patients to stop doing whatever the habit is.

“I tell them to identify exactly the point at which they start looking for the item or activity.”

James Halder, Director, Sonar Seed

“Social media has always been changing quite quickly, following trends and the shifting algorithms. The reason social media feels so different right now is because of the current trends combined with AI. The latest generation of influencers and users have their own set of memes and in-jokes, which are always a little alienating by design for those outside the bubble.

“And AI is being used to spam feeds at a scale that was previously unattainable. Because AI allows fast, low-effort creation and iteration, there is so much volume that plenty of it hits whatever the algorithms are trained to promote, and we see it everywhere. AI is also accelerating trends, allowing users to actually create memes and generate trending posts.

Petra Smith, Founder at Squirrels & Bears

“What most users sense is that the feed they open every day is not designed to show them their own people first, but is designed to push whoever or whatever is statistically most likely to keep them scrolling for a few more minutes. That means the emotional experience of opening an app has shifted from checking in on the people you love to being served content chosen for its ability to hold your attention rather than its ability to matter to you.

“The other factor driving the fatigue is the collapse of visual distinction between paid content, strangers pushed by the algorithm, ‘people you may know’ suggestions, and genuine updates from friends, all of which now appear in an identical format within the same feed.

“There is also a change in who performs for an audience. The pressure to craft a hook or drive engagement used to sit almost entirely with brands and the marketers working on their behalf, myself included. What’s changed is that this exact same logic has migrated onto ordinary people sharing a birthday dinner or a family holiday, so that posting something as simple as a photo now comes with the constant calculation about whether it will land, whether it’s interesting enough, and whether it will perform.

“Genuine sharing needs an audience that already cares about you, without a system deciding who gets to see it first – and that’s something that we have lost.”

Allan Dabre, Technology Compliance & AI Lead at PricewaterhouseCoopers Advisory (PwC)

“Social media stopped feeling social the moment algorithms optimised for engagement over connection. Platforms learned that outrage, political animosity, anxiety, and tribalism drive more clicks than genuine interaction, so that is exactly what gets served. “Users are no longer participants in a community. They are data points in an engagement loop, pulled deeper into echo chambers that reinforce existing beliefs, amplify division, and quietly erode mental wellbeing” .

“The constant exposure to curated perfection, divisive content, and algorithmically amplified negativity is not just changing how people interact online. It is contributing to a measurable rise in depression, particularly among younger users who have never known a world without it. What once felt like an open town square now feels like a personalised rabbit hole with real psychological consequences. The technology did not change social media. It revealed that the business model was never really about connection in the first place.

“The introduction of AI into these platforms has accelerated the problem significantly. AI powered recommendation engines do not just reflect user preferences, they shape them, nudging behaviour toward increasingly extreme content because extremity drives engagement. What took algorithms years to learn, AI is now optimising in real time, making the echo chamber faster, deeper, and harder to escape.”

Cache Merrill, Founder, Zibtek

“I’ve seen, in general, that social platforms have become really adept at producing engagement – but engagement isn’t the same as value. When I first came online, I felt like I stumbled across people and ideas and communities that stuck with me, long after I left. Now, there’s just a lot more output, and far less of it feels particularly meaningful.

“And I think that’s actually a key difference.

“In the work that I’ve done to build software, one of the lessons I learned is that users don’t stick around just because an app is an attention sink – they stick around because it reliably helps them get something of value done. I suspect that’s part of the reason people say social media just feels different today – that the technology’s gotten a lot better at making our attention stick, without making an experience that we’re enthusiastic about returning to.”