Why do I suspect that the age of social media is slowly drawing to a close?
It’s actually quite simple. When I want to reach a specific person, I call them, send a message on WhatsApp, or use some other direct communication tool. Or we meet in person.
We go to social media for entirely different reasons. Setting aside the promotion of products and ideas, we go there for small psychological rewards: to enjoy a cute video, to “like” a comment we agree with, to reassure ourselves that others see the world the same way we do. We want to feel that we belong to the right tribe. We take pleasure in seeing our posts and photos validated by others.
What all of this has in common is that it is fundamentally self-directed. We are not really engaging with other people as people; we are using them as instruments of our own gratification. And in many cases, we do not even know who stands behind the anonymous accounts we interact with.
Now here is the turning point: artificial intelligence can provide these same rewards more effectively.
It can curate content more precisely. It can reassure us more convincingly that we are interesting and entertaining. It can affirm our views with greater consistency, presenting them as reasonable and widely shared. In this domain, it has a clear advantage. Many people do not yet realize this, because they still use AI as if it were merely an advanced dictionary. But that will change.
The transition itself need not be dramatic. More and more people will maintain a social media account while simultaneously engaging with AI systems. Gradually, they will spend less time on the platforms and more time in interaction with intelligent systems. Meanwhile, the platforms themselves will integrate their own AI tools—this process has already begun—and give them an ever larger role. Traditional forms of interaction will quietly fade.
And little will be lost. Social media, for all its promises, has been among the more corrosive developments of the modern era.