I have not posted that much recently about social media in general because of the continuing dissatisfaction many people have continually shown about social media in 2025. I have drafted several posts about this but hopefully this one should end 2025 and show people how and what should help them in 2026. More and more people and clients are contacting me to express doubts about their social media presence, and there is still a real malaise about the future, mainly brought on about the onslaught of AI and the sheer amount of posts that are AI generated on social media. I want to begin by simply addressing this and saying that AI will totally make social media a different game in 2026 as it is already doing in 2025 and will stop many creators from bothering to hand create content at all. The vast majority of content is already AI created in some way and every platform is scrabbling to leverage AI in some way shape or form and as far as I can see this will only mean massive job losses and even whole industries collapsing in the long term. This financial pressure will cause a huge shift in how things are made and consumed and we are already seeing this have a drastic negative effect on many people especially the older and more seasoned social media users. This simple shift is pretty much unanimously panned by most already, and very few are in favour of the continued benefits, if there are any, of AI being shoved into literally everything…
The next thing I have to address is the continued legal and financial pressures that social media companies are being placed under. We all know that the platforms must and should do better, it is often something that is complained against, but recent news and the banning of social media for under 16’s in Australia has shown this to be something that IS coming. As youtube for example is included in the laws in Australia, platforms are going to see a financial hit and they will inevitably pass that on to users. I have been saying this for a while, but I honestly think the days of the “free” accounts is coming slowly to an end. Adverts that support say Facebook are probably the most complained about thing I still see. If you don’t want adverts then you must either pay up, put up or move on. But be aware that in most instances, platforms without ads and without a way to reward the content creators only fuel the increasing AI slop we see. AI is just a quick way to churn out rubbish in my eyes, with few decent usages, unless you pay and pay big. I can see that you could literally churn out 100x the content with AI, but with honestly about 50% the quality. I guess if you spend enough time then it will reward you, but long term, well I think it will just turn people away (and clients back that up). The OSA (online safety act) in the UK has also meant that many people use less social media with sites deciding to block usage in the UK altogether and others deciding that this legislation means it is time to quit and move on. I also don’t feel happy that AI slop is now feeding AI slop meaning that diminishing returns are already being hit with content, plus major platforms selling YOUR hard earned work to train AI is pretty much a slap in the face. The big platforms like Google, Meta, Amazon, X are just f&$king you over in this respect because their T&C’s pretty much mean you sign over anything to them to use as they see fit. This attitude plus the fact that that a “free” platform pretty much guarantees you a dollop of security and privacy issues whilst also selling your work is a big reason why people are turning their backs on stuff like this. For this issue, the only way I can see you can keep some control is going back to things like blogs and having your own website, as long as you don’t host it on a free system like say Blogger who’ll sell your soul to your granny several times over without thinking. This is why I no longer use Google as my main search engine as they pretty much have ruined internet searches in 2025 – and those AI summaries that literally lie are my pet peeve!
So enough about the negatives, and what can YOU do to help your social media usage? Well I’m afraid the biggest thing I can say is that if you are someone who is just on social media for yourself without promoting anything, well the glory days are just over. You will see a lot less interaction/likes/whatever as people just cannot see your posts like they used to. The platforms are about promoting content within their own ecosystem, so for example, posting a link away from Facebook is going to be pretty much useless for many. Easy sharing of content to Facebook is pretty much impossible these days as the focus is on keeping you on Facebook at any costs, thus the multitude of ads, promoted content and people and groups. The groups only function best if they are private, so if you are a long term user of Facebook you need to think about just using groups like individual websites and put up with the ads and all that goes with FB in 2025. If you are promoting yourself though, be aware that running a group is pretty much a full time job nowadays because of how the privacy and the poor rep Facebook now has. In the tech side of things FB is now openly laughed about and derided, and younger users pretty much never use it any longer. I mean when TV programs joke about how shit FB is you know most people think it is a joke… and plan accordingly!
Away from FB threads seems to be OK at the moment, but it is a very cut down experience compared to FB. If you are a seasoned social media user, then probably staying on FB is the best, but as I’ve said you can pretty much kiss goodbye to the old days unless you are pretty much putting loads of content on FB and I mean loads like 10 posts a day, every day. But in that case, I’d recommend using multiple platforms for free, and using something like Fedica to post once to those platforms. Remember this is just general advice, if you are a video creator then Youtube would be best unless you are doing short format in which case it is TikTok, but as you can see the sheer amount of platforms nowadays has diluted things so much that the amount of time you need to spend is huge – thus the recommendation to setup a multi posting system. If you have a website, then this can and does drive traffic for you, but again, the numbers are way down on what they used to be… perhaps a Substack can work, but again, you need to work at it. No quick and dirty fixes in 2025 I’m afraid. If you move to a paid hosting platform, say a decent hosted WordPress website – cough I can help you out with that HERE – then you can setup plugins to post to a few places automagically, but here FB continues to be awkward as, well, they really want you to stay on FB!
Right enough babbling, and yes, it seems pretty negative as we head into 2025 but just remember you can continue to get decent usage out of social media, but you have to work at it more than ever. If you want your content out there, and want people to see it, then expect it to be harder than ever to stand out from the crowd. Hard work is needed, and a dollop of luck as well. Trends are harder hitting these days but over way, way faster!