The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state

I believe many of the problems in our current social media landscape could be solved by eliminating the "feed" and instead displaying posts, updates, and pictures from friends, family, and those we know in real life. This approach might conflict with the profit models of big tech social media and could go against what most people have become accustomed to. Personally, I would love a smaller social network where I can stay connected with my school friends, college friends, and distant family without having to see irrelevant posts, like some stupid remark from a politician halfway around the world or influencers doing something outrageous just for attention.

This has moved heavily into group chats and I’m not sure it’s coming back.

Group chats are basically the Circles that Google+ saw the need for but could never get fully set up. A lot of people don’t want to share personal updates and photos to a broad swath of friends and acquaintances.

Meanwhile Instagram and Facebook keep evolving. Facebook is turning into a weird Reddit for older people. Instagram is turning into a hipper LinkedIn, where artists, musicians, and local businesses share career and business updates and advertise their wares.

Group chats existed before any of this social media did. Pretty funny that we’ve come full circle on that.

iOS added more social network-like functionality to the group chats—like being able to name them, set a photo, etc. To me, this helped cement their popularity since you can create a bespoke “named thing” that makes it easier to return to. You don’t accidentally leave someone off when returning to the convo.