Why Social Media Got Worse and the Rebellion Against It

Over the past 5 years, social media has gone through one of the most dramatic transformations since it began. The platforms that once promised connection, community, and a voice for everyone have devolved into something much more harmful. Viral stunts, immature pranks, choreographed dances. Also, heightened levels of anxiety, depression, and the disruption of the very fabric of society. I want to explore why social media has gotten so much worse recently and the quiet but growing rebellion against it

that has the very architects of the system on edge. This video is sponsored by Headspace. More about them later. So, I think we can learn a lot about the problems with social media today by looking at how Instagram promotes its own app. If you go to the login page, it says sign up to see photos and videos from your friends. What a load of Anyone that uses Instagram knows this just isn't true and is far from

the content machine it's become. But it does give us a clue into the challenges this company and every social media platform is facing today and why the distance is growing between what people want and what they're getting. Jack Ki, the co-founder and CEO of Patreon, has spent years thinking about the economics of the internet and has seen from the front lines just how drastically social media has changed since it was first introduced. >> Jack, thank you

so much for being here. Question number one, what the happened to Instagram? >> Oh man, what I love that question? Uh, okay, here's what happened. Web two sort of emerged in like 2005. Web two companies were like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube. The amazing thing about web 2 was you could like subscribe to a creator. You could follow them and then you would see the rest of their work as it came to you in the future. This was

a new thing. Before web 2, the internet was mostly read only. Like you log in via AOL or something and you you like can just like read the news. But the the amazing thing about web two was for the first time like people could upload, they could share, they could like broadcast their ideas and the like the most profound piece of internet architecture came out at that time uh you know that came out at the time

was was this thing called the follow. >> As Jack explained it, the follow gave you the power. You decided who you liked, who you wanted to hear from, and who you wanted to fill your feed. It felt like your corner of the internet, a personalized space built around real connections and genuine interests. I only subscribe to people and watch videos that make me happy, inspire me, make me feel positive, uplift me. >> But that version of

social media didn't last. The idealistic vision was great for users, but not for investors. Once these platforms went public, they faced a new challenge. How do you turn connection into profit? We all know what happened next. Social platforms started to run ads and ads made them a lot of money. So, they scaled the model. Grow larger. Show more ads. Get more users. Show more ads. Hold users attention for longer. Show more ads. Get more data on

who your customer is, their hopes, fears, and dreams. Sell more expensive ads. The customer of Facebook is the advertiser. And what the advertiser wants from consumers is attention. And what Facebook has built is a machine that converts attention into revenue. That is the Facebook machine. Everything about the financial system is set up to hold Facebook accountable for revenue growth. What that does is it aims the entire financial system, hundreds of years of financial infrastructure. It aims

that entire system of accountability and discipline at sucking attention away from humanity. That's the problem. That is the problem. >> You say these things like they are my fault and yet they are not. Well, you did create a platform with a monetary incentive for people to spread misinformation. [Laughter] >> Bo Burnham recently summed it up well. Tech companies aren't satisfied with just a piece of your time. They want it all. They are now trying to colonize

every minute of your life. That is what these people are trying to do. Every single free moment you have is a moment you could be looking at your phone and they could be gathering information to target ads at you. that that's what's happening. >> When the biggest tech companies in the world are competing for your attention, they'll design features that exploit every human vulnerability they can find. Even the smallest change can have a really big impact,

like infinite scroll. No, not a never-ending pastry, something much more nefarious. Before this feature existed, websites had pages, natural breaks that let you decide whether to keep going or to stop. In 2006, interface designer Asa Rascin came up with an idea to replace those breaks with a neverending feed. What seemed like a small improvement quickly became one of the most influential changes in how we use the internet today. Without a stopping point and an endless stream

of content, this simple feature can quietly steal hundreds of hours from your life every year. Asa himself says he regrets creating it. I was blind to how it was going to get picked up and used, not for people, but against people. And this was actually a huge lesson for me that me sitting here optimizing an interface for one individual is sort of like that's that's that's that was morally good. But being blind to how it was

going to be used globally was sort of globally amoral at best or maybe even a little immoral. In a world where apps rise and fall overnight, the social media giants have learned to move fast or risk becoming the next MySpace. When a feature works on one platform, it doesn't stay there for long. It's copied, repackaged, and rolled out everywhere. We've seen this happen with pretty much every fast growing app from Snapchat to Be Real and of

course, >> Tik Tok. >> Tik Tok. >> Tik Tok. >> Tik Tok. >> Tik Tok explodes in popularity. >> It's surging in popularity here in the US. >> 15-year-old Charlie Dio's new favorite pastime is making up dance moves for the social media app Tik Tok. This group of 20 talented content creators is part of a growing trend of young social media stars snapping up big real estate so they can physically be together to make videos 24/7.

>> We're definitely like the two most hated. Definitely >> the most cringiest. >> Like they're literally call blueberry cuz their hair is blue. >> Yeah. >> And then I'm orange. They're like, "Oh my god, the orange and the blueberry." >> What has happened over the last 5 years is really profound. Tik Tok came onto the scene and Tik Tok's major innovation I think people think oh Tik Tok is is vertical first short form video but that's

not Tik Tok's major innovation I think that's a red herring what what Tik Tok did that was truly different and innovative was Tik Tok said oh you know these concepts of feeds that people are using where you have your followers and you scroll through a feed and you see people you follow Tik Tok said forget about following we're going to rebuild your feed from scratch based on who we think you're going to the like not who

you've chosen to follow, but what the platform thinks you will spend time on, and we're going to optimize it for time spent. While Tik Tok didn't invent the algorithmic feed, they did crack the code on virality. For years, your feed was shaped by who you chose to follow. Tik Tok removed that control entirely, replacing it with a feed that didn't care about your social graph. Instead, every scroll was another data point, teaching the algorithm exactly what

you would keep watching. The most successful video I had right now was like at 68 million views right now. >> I'm sorry, 68 million views. >> Yeah, it's just me like turning into like a monster. >> Now, if it had just been Tik Tok that did that, we all would have just left Tik Tok and and that would have been the end of the story. But the thing is it worked. Um, and by it worked, I

mean Tik Tok built a very addictive consumer experience that people couldn't tear themselves out of. And so traffic sort of siphoned off of Instagram and Facebook and all the other social apps and onto Tik Tok. And all the other social apps saw this and felt pressure to get traffic back. And the way that they did that was by also ditching the follow in their systems and by building for you feeds. >> Tik Tok might say that

its for you feed democratized the internet. Suddenly, anyone could reach millions regardless of their follower count. And simultaneously, viewers could discover creators they'd never heard of. On the surface, it looks like a win-win. But in reality, this change had far worse consequences. In Johan Har's bestselling book, Stolen Focus, he documents exactly what went wrong when these platforms rolled out these kinds of feeds. >> The algorithm is neutral about the question of whether it wants you to

be calm or angry. That's not its concern. It only cares about one thing. Will you keep scrolling? Unfortunately, there's a quirk of human behavior. On average, we will stare at something negative and outrageous for a lot longer than we will stare at something positive and calm. >> Go like this. >> No, Mom. She's seriously >> No, I know, but go like this for the video. >> Social media has turned into a model that serves the platforms

more than the creators or the audience. And as a result, people are starting to turn against it and they don't have any plans to come back. So for me, when it comes to incorporating technology into my life, it's not about getting off the grid and living in a cave. It's about finding balance. I want technology to add value to my life, to help me find purpose, meaning, get clarity, and help quiet those late night thoughts about

the rise of fascism, the collapse of the global economy, and the possibility that this country might be run by lizard people. That's where my sponsor, Headspace, comes in. It's the everyday mental health app designed to reduce stress, improve sleep, and boost happiness. And right now you can get it for free for 60 days by using my unique link. That's headspace.com/mattella. That's 60 days free. It's a pretty awesome deal if I do say so myself. I started

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description below this video to get your 60-day free trial of Headspace today. Seriously, go do that now. Like, you would be an idiot not to take that deal. An idiot. Probably shouldn't call you guys idiots. It's not good form. It's really easy to romanticize the past. Social media was never this perfect beacon of civilization. Early on, it gave us internet stalking, endless cringe, and yeah, a couple beheading videos. But it's gotten objectively worse. Even as we

see an explosion of creativity with independent creators producing thoughtful, hilarious, and inspiring work, these voices are often getting drowned out by professional grifters, fast-moving trends, high production clickbait, and AI generated content, most of which are surfacing above the people that we chose to follow in the first place. What was once pitched as a town square now feels more like reality TV on crack. Meta itself admitted during the FTC trial recently that just 7% of time spent

on Instagram in 2025 is spent viewing content from friends. I think social media has become less social like it's more about just consuming this kind of highly commodified content and it's more about lifestyle aspiration things that you are moving toward in your own life not just like what's going on around you and how are you relating to your friends and family. I mean to me that kind of removes the purpose of social media. This trend of

pushing viral content over personal connections has led to more profit in the short term. But there's a huge problem. Even though the usage numbers are still high, public sentiment is turning against Tik Tok and Instagram. People are starting to hate it. >> I've been in a few dark places in my life and a lot of it was influenced by social comparison of social media. >> I was getting to the point with social media where I felt

completely detached from reality. I was more irritated with my daughter. I was comparing my marriage to other people's marriage. I felt more insecure about my face, my hair, my body. >> According to a recent poll, twothirds of 16 to 24 year olds think social media does more harm than good. Plus, half think that they spent too much time on it when they were younger. As journalist Gabby Hinsliff wrote, "This isn't how someone talks about something they

love, but how you look back on a relationship that was in retrospect making you miserable." There's a fundamental mismatch between the way our brains are wired and this behavior of exposing yourself to stimuli with intermittent rewards throughout all of your waking hours. So, it's one thing to spend a couple hours at the slot machine in Las Vegas, but if you bring a slot machine with you and you pull that handle all day long from when you

wake up to when you go to bed, we're not wired from it. It shortcircuits the brain. And we're starting to find that it has actual cognitive consequences. One of them being the sort of pervasive background hum of anxiety. I don't understand how the current model even works. Like, it doesn't make sense to me because I speak to very few people that say, "Oh, I love Instagram. Oh, it's a joy. I open up Instagram every day and

just like it's a blast scrolling through." How does this all work? Like, why are people using these platforms if they're making them miserable? There is a difference between what we value and what we attend to. That is the core of the pain we're feeling. is that we will pay attention to lots of things that aren't important to us, that don't bring our lives meaning and joy, that don't better us over the long term, that don't enable

and help our brains and psyches and make us feel good and strong and better. We'll pay attention to all kinds of [ __ ] that is not good for us. I know what the [ __ ] is going on. I work at Patreon. I work at a tech company. I've seen these systems from the inside. I personally had to set a time limit on Instagram on my phone to stop myself from going. I had to set a 10-minute time limit.

And I I do that now. And I don't give myself more than 10 minutes. Like, I had to draw a hard line because these systems are so powerful. I remember when I did my first social media detox back in 2018. I quit all the apps for 30 days. At the time, this was still considered pretty new, if not socially unacceptable. You really felt like you were going to miss out on what your friends were up to.

It's different now. Now, you're only missing out on some viral trends and a quick hit of dopamine. Digital detoxes and social media cleanses aren't fringe anymore. They're everywhere. Minimalist phones and dumb apps are getting more and more popular. Concerts and venues are asking people to put their phones in bags or cover their cameras with stickers to encourage people to be more present. Put your phones away. >> In real life, organizations and groups like the offline club

are popping up everywhere, encouraging people to ditch their phones and meet in person. And a lot more people, myself included, are going one step further and deleting these apps outright. >> I want to get my life back. And I feel like the only way to do this is to break up with the internet. >> I've decided to basically quit social media. >> No Instagram, no Tik Tok, no Twitter, nothing. I don't have social media. I'm better

than you. I'm frolicking in the woods, scavenging ingredients to make my life whole. >> The growing push back and the rising dissatisfaction among users is a serious problem for social platforms. None of them want people to dislike or regret their experience, but they can't help themselves. They're caught between satisfying users and generating profit. And within a system built for endless growth, their choice is always going to be for the latter. the one thing that might stop

them is if this push back grows enough to hurt their bottom line. >> That it's already part of the public consciousness and the public conversation. So it seems to me that we're in this pivotal moment for for for humans right now. If I really step back, I I actually have a lot of hope. And I have hope because humanity's only been trying to figure this out for two decades. Like the internet is brand new and and

it's it's pervasive and dramatic and it represents a massive change for human communication and organization. It's going to take humans a little while to figure that out. Thanks so much to Jack for sitting down to chat with me for this video. Check out the links in the description to learn more about what he's up to. And thanks again to Headspace. Don't forget to grab 60 days free with my link headspace.com/mattella. Thanks for watching and see you

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