I have come to the conclusion that the age of social media, is over.

The age of social media began with the advent and spread of Facebook. MySpace, was of course the first modern social media; however, a single social media does not define an age. No, when Facebook became mainstream, as the second social media to do so, then we were in an Age. Others quickly followed. Youtube, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat—every few years there was another hip new platform.

All of these are dead or dying. Tumblr and Pinterest are largely abandoned. Facebook is today equivalent with being out of touch with technology. Instagram survives for now as a place to share memes. Snapchat similarly is used as an alternative to texting, far from its original purpose. Twitter is frequently used, despite being riddled with bots and plagued by mismanagement. Reddit seems the most prepared to weather the coming fall, though only because it was least like a social media to begin with. Still, a news platform is a far cry from the memes Reddit is used for today. There is no social platform of the age of social media which today does not show signs of age. The internet moves quickly, and it is impossible to keep up.

Instagram was created in 2010, Snapchat in 2010. Internet communication has hardly evolved in the past decade. At least in terms of true social media. Discord and Slack, frankly, are the closest thing to a new communication medium to arise in the past couple of years. Today, it plays a role similar to the one Snapchat held 5 years ago. Adults didn’t use it, it was the social network that kids. However, it never reached the same social-media status that the greats once did.

Though the Age of Social Media is over, that does not mean that these platforms are dead. On the contrary, internet communication is thriving more than ever. However, social media is no longer just a way to share parts of your life. It is rare for any two individuals to be linked on a single social media. Rather than the age of giants which we are leaving, we have an abundance of smaller ways to communicate. iMessage has evolved, to be almost a social media in its own right. Discord or Slack or GroupMe are used to organize groups. The old giants are still being used, as previously discussed, just not for the purposes they were intended for. And there are a myriad of \“up and comers\” who want to replace or become the next generation of giants—Mastodon, Rigby, Riot, etc. And e-mail remains an invaluable form of communication, despite numerous attempts to kill it.

The danger is that no one seems to realize this. Social medias continue to rise up and get funding on the basis of being \“the next big thing.\” While popularity will wax and wane, and there may be new social medias that become viral, the old ones are not going to die. Never again will the internet be a simple place with all your friends on one platform, where you have one profile you can customize to your liking; your online image will be made up of your presences on a myriad of networks. This is the future.