Last Updated on November 16, 2025 by Karl Thompson
For the past two decades, social media has dominated our lives — shaping how we communicate, shop, learn, and even think. But as John Burn-Murdoch notes in his recent Financial Times column, the tide may finally be turning. The endless scroll that once hooked billions is starting to lose its hold, particularly on the younger users who once defined it.
From a sociological point of view, this isn’t just a tech story — it’s a shift in new media consumption, identity, and power. It touches on who uses these platforms, how they shape “reality” (hello, Baudrillard), and whether audiences are still active players or just passive targets for algorithmic slop.
The Data: Less Scrolling, More Sanity
Burn-Murdoch draws on GWI data from 250,000 adults in more than 50 countries: by late 2024, the typical user spent about 2 hours 20 minutes per day on social media — almost 10% less than in 2022, with the steepest falls among teens and twenty-somethings.
Independent reports back this up. GWI’s Digital 2024 analysis found average daily social media use at 2 hours 23 minutes, and social platforms taking over a third of all time spent online. DataReportal – Global Digital Insights Ofcom’s Online Nation 2024 similarly shows heavy but uneven use in the UK: adults average 4 hours 20 minutes online per day, with women aged 18–24 online for more than an hour longer than men — highlighting that some groups remain deeply embedded in digital life even as others cut back. www.ofcom.org.uk
This fits neatly with my overview in Who Uses New Media?:
- Young people use new media more than older age groups.
- Men, on average, use it more than women.
- Middle-class users are slightly ahead of working-class users, reflecting a digital divide in access, skills and usage.
So if social media use is now falling, it won’t fall equally. It’s likely that:
- Early adopters are also early “log-off-ers” – especially digitally literate young adults who can consciously manage their time and curate their platforms.
- More marginalised users, who rely on platforms for work, side-hustles or cheap entertainment, may have less freedom to disengage.
In other words, a “healthier” relationship with social media risks becoming a classed and gendered privilege, not an automatic universal trend.
The Decline of the Doomscroll
Burn-Murdoch suggests that platforms have effectively broken their own product by flooding feeds with low-value “slop”: AI-generated clips, recycled memes, viral bait. What once felt like connection now feels like consumption.
From a sociological angle, this looks like a shift in audience power. Earlier theories like Uses and Gratifications saw audiences as active users who turned to media to meet needs such as diversion, identity, relationships and surveillance (keeping up with the world). Posting, commenting and curating your profile on Instagram or TikTok seemed like classic examples of active, creative audiences.
But as feeds have become more algorithmic and less social, things look closer to what cultural effects theorists describe: a slow, long-term shaping of values and worldviews through repetitive imagery and frames. Instead of scrolling to connect, we scroll to cope:
- Doomscrolling the latest crisis.
- Absorbing endless consumer content and influencer “recommendations”.
- Being nudged, gently but constantly, towards certain lifestyles and political common sense.
And then there’s labour. Social media companies turn our likes, comments and posts into data that can be monetised — a form of free digital labour. That model depends on compulsive engagement. Once users start logging on with a purpose (“I’ll just message my friend and leave”) rather than reflexively tapping the app, the whole attention-extraction machine starts to judder.
So the “decline of the doomscroll” isn’t just better vibes — it’s a potential crack in an economic model built on treating audiences as exhaustible resources.
Baudrillard, Hyperreality and the Boredom of the Scroll
Jean Baudrillard argued that we live in a world of hyperreality – where signs and images don’t just reflect reality, they replace it. In hyperreality, we relate more to simulations than to anything “real” underneath.
For a while, social media felt like a textbook example:
- Curated selfies and aesthetics replaced messy everyday life.
- “Relatable” content simulated authenticity as a style.
- Online drama and discourse became more real, emotionally, than offline politics.
But Baudrillard also talks about the “implosion of meaning” – when the sheer volume of images and information makes everything feel weightless, interchangeable, pointless. Once your feed is mostly recycled trends and AI-generated “content”, social media stops being a hyperreal fantasy and starts feeling like… spam.
Seen through Baudrillard’s lens, the current boredom with social media is what happens when:
- Hyperreality becomes obviously fake – we all know the game.
- The promise of identity and connection gets drowned by automation and advertising.
- Signs (likes, views, follows) lose their emotional charge.
Logging off, in this sense, can be read as a refusal of simulacra: a quiet “no thanks” to a world where our attention is endlessly mined by images that no longer mean very much.
For a deeper sociological introduction, see Jean Baudrillard on ReviseSociology.
From Postmodern Play to Postmodern Burnout
The postmodern model of audihttps://revisesociology.com/2019/10/30/postmodern-theory-media-audience/ence effects argues that in today’s media-saturated world, individuals use media actively and playfully to construct their identities. There is no single “mass audience” being passively injected with messages; instead, people pick and mix content to suit them.
That’s exactly how early social media was sold:
- Remix culture, memes and fan communities.
- The rise of the prosumer – both producer and consumer of content.
- Participatory cultures around gaming, fandoms and online activism.
The current shift suggests something more complicated is happening:
- Many users are moving into smaller, niche spaces: Discord servers, private group chats, micro-communities.
- Public feeds feel increasingly like broadcast TV – algorithmically scheduled, low-effort entertainment.
- Self-presentation has shifted from “performative happiness” to “performative burnout”, as Zoe Williams puts it – ironic posts about being exhausted, numb or chronically online. The Guardian
From a postmodern perspective, this looks like a transition from playful, creative identity-work on big platforms to a more fragmented, selective media diet:
- Front stage: public feeds, where people post less, lurk more, and treat content as background noise.
- Back stage: private chats and niche communities where people still actively shape identity and relationships.
Social media isn’t disappearing; it’s reorganising into layers of visibility and intimacy.
The Rise of Mindful Media
If this decline continues, we may be witnessing the start of a new phase of digital life — one less about social validation and more about selective engagement. Messaging apps, niche communities, newsletters, and podcasts are gaining ground, as people look for smaller, saner corners of the internet.
Ofcom’s UK data shows that while time on traditional social platforms may be levelling off or dipping for some groups, audio and long-form content (especially podcasts) are still on the rise. his suggests people aren’t rejecting media entirely — they’re choosing formats that fit around life instead of replacing it.
Sociologically, you could say we’re shifting from:
- “Always-on sociality” – being permanently visible, accessible, and measurable online.
- To “bounded connectivity” – carving out specific times, spaces and platforms where we choose to connect.
This doesn’t automatically solve problems of inequality or exploitation (Substack newsletters and wellness podcasts are still part of the attention economy), but it does show audiences exercising agency about when and how they want to be reached.
Final Thoughts: After the Scroll
Maybe social media isn’t dying — maybe it’s maturing, and so are we.
- The new media stats remind us that any decline is uneven and stratified by age, class and gender.
- Baudrillard helps us see why feeds stuffed with AI slop feel so hollow: the simulation is no longer seductive, just exhausting.
- Postmodern audience theory shows that people are not simply switching off; they’re re-routing their attention into more private, niche and meaningful spaces.
As Zoe Williams suggests, we may be moving from performative happiness to performative burnout — and perhaps, finally, towards selective silence. If the end of endless scrolling means a partial return to real-world relationships, offline hobbies, and less commodified forms of selfhood, then losing our grip on social media might be one of the healthiest social trends of the 2020s.
Signposting
For a full overview of key concepts, theories, and contemporary examples, check out my A-level Media Studies resources page , where you’ll find links to revision notes on audience effects, ownership, representation, and more