- Wired writes about how first-gen social media users have "nowhere to go."
- With the big social platforms fracturing and losing favor, there's a hole in millennial hearts.
In Wired, Jason Parham writes about how first-gen social media users have nowhere to go. Indeed, millennials have soured on the big social platforms: Facebook, Twitter, and even Instagram feel dead.
There's a lot of ways to feel about this: maybe relief, maybe anger at the companies who messed things up. But Parham made me feel something different: sad.
He points out that "first-gen" users (like me) were part of a "golden age of connectivity," and for those years, it really was exciting.
He writes:
Millennials are the last of the analog world, both of yesterday and tomorrow, the bridge between what was and what will be. Maybe this is where my hesitation takes root, and why it feels like there are no good apps left for socializing the way we used to. We came of age on a diet of chatrooms and Myspace. Our expression was devoutly digital. We signed up en masse because what we sought in the next frontier of adulthood, we slowly realized, was being actualized online. Friendster, Blogger, Tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook were where we found community, honed our creative urges, and secured careers. In time, we used social media to remake civic life.
I'm sad that golden age is over, and I'm not sure we'll ever experience anything like it again.