The original promise of social media platforms was not only reach, but connection. For cultural institutions, they offered a way to speak in a more relatable voice, connect with audiences and invite participation (beyond the limits of geography).
Until around 2022, that promise felt genuinely transformative.
At a time when many institutional websites were clunky and newsletters felt obligatory, platforms like Twitter and Instagram opened new doors.
Campaigns like #AskACurator and #MuseumWeek showed what was possible: museums joined public conversations; curators shared scholarship in accessible ways; peers across the sector found one another.
There was also that unmistakable street-level sensation of it—refreshing an app on a commute, thumb hovering, and the faint buzz of expectation when something “hits.”
Platform instability: from engagement to dependence anxiety
Today, that landscape looks very different.
The visibility is still there, sure.
But social media is no longer as reliable as a tool for sustained community building (and engagement).
Take the case of Twitter – its transition to ‘X’, prompted several people to quit the platform.
Years of audience building, professional networking and institutional presence fell apart before one could fully grasp the impact of it.
Some of us migrated to Mastodon, some to BlueSky, some to both (while testing waters on LinkedIn) and yet some disengaged entirely.
I fall into that last category but the experience left me with the larger question about dependence on platforms for community building – if platforms come and go, will institutions keep investing resources in rebuilding audiences again and again?
Whether technology companies should be political is a separate debate, but the reality is that platforms like X, Meta (who discontinued fact-checking), Substack (who took an anti-censorship stance on neoNazi voices), and others now carry explicit ideological and economic positions that institutions cannot easily separate themselves from.
It’s a pretty uncomfortable thought, really—trying to build public trust inside someone else’s business model.
So what comes after social media as we know it?
In early November 2025, the Financial Times released a report suggesting that we may have passed what it called “peak social media.” Drawing on data from a global survey of more than 50 countries, the report pointed to slow user-growth, algorithmic fatigue, and a sharp decline in time spent on platforms (most visible among GenZ).
Misryoum newsroom reported the cultural pattern might be widening: not necessarily a desire to disengage completely, but a growing consciousness around how and why we engage online.
Who wants a social feed dominated by influencers, advertisements, AI-generated content?!
What seems to be shifting is not just boredom—it’s the sense that the feed is exhausting, and maybe a little less trustworthy than before.
In my own experience (and in conversations with colleagues) I’ve noticed a growing tendency to lurk rather than participate.
We scroll, save, and read, but post less, comment less, and share less.
To be completely honest, I’ve saved more cat-posts last year than culture ones!
Platforms like Instagram have noticed this change too.
If you notice, Views has become the dominant metric in the Insights tab, normalising ‘visibility without interaction’.
But for museums, libraries, and cultural institutions that have spent nearly a decade optimising for engagement metrics, the implication is deeper than a drop in likes/comments. It forces a rethink: if engagement is no longer a stable currency, then what do you actually build?
Analog habits and owned channels: the next digital bargain
Let’s pause for a moment. The shift in social media isn’t an isolated occurrence. It sits alongside two other parallel shifts worth paying attention to – a renewed interest in analog and the steady growth of platforms built around shared interest.
Around the same time that the Financial Times report was released, I came across an Instagram carousel with a confident prediction for 2026 : ‘analog is making a comeback..’. The post featured visuals of an iPod, a digital camera and other technologies of the past. I saved the post. Over the next few weeks, the algorithm (predictably) surfaced similar posts with an increased frequency—opinion pieces, campaigns, and lists of “going offline” that felt less like
nostalgia and more like strategy. Vogue Business described going offline as a ‘status symbol’. The New Yorker agreed that it is ‘cool to have no followers now’. Eventbrite reported an uptick in board-game events, and Polaroid’s campaign ‘Real Vs Reel’, pushed back against the reign of screens and AI. For 2026, Pinterest has predicted a letter-writing renaissance, amidst the rise of printed zines and newsletters. Is this nostalgia? Perhaps, but it also represents the values
of a slow social era – intentional attention, reflection and engagement.
If you pay attention to where platforms themselves are investing, a different pattern emerges.
Meta’s push towards Whatsapp Communities, an algorithmic preference for Facebook and Messenger groups, Instagram’s ‘broadcast channels’ and subscription features – all signal a move away from ‘feeds’ towards smaller, intentional groups.
Outside Meta, Reddit (which I’ve grown to love), Discord and (even emails) continue to grow as spaces shaped by shared interest.
These may seem unrelated but together, they signal a shift towards intentional participation.
Crucially, these are environments where participation is shaped, moderated, and sustained.
The good news I guess is that museums (libraries and theatres too) are already designed for this moment.
Their physical spaces support pause, reflection, and collective experience.
Silent Reading Sundays at Bode Museum Berlin / Photo: Shivya Nath
We’re already seeing this surface in silent reading sessions at Berlin’s Bode Museum, film photography workshops at Museo Camera in Gurgaon, collage-making at Fotografiska, and so on.
But there’s also an opportunity to support the making-culture online as well as promote digital collections, which can become central as reference points/inspiration.
The opportunity, then, is not to abandon digital platforms altogether, but to rethink digital communication as an extension of the values museums and cultural organizations already practice offline: community, continuity, and more human-centred forms of engagement.
The challenge is translating that shift without defaulting to endless content production.
What would it mean for museums & cultural institutions to act as community hosts, and not “content producers”?
Social media rewards volume: more formats and increased frequency mean more chances to surface.
Community hosting is different—responsibility, support for contributors, and valuing participation.
There’s proof of concept in how some institutions have structured collaboration over time, not just posts—like National Gallery’s bicentenary initiative and its 200 Creators Network, later evolving into a Creative Collaborators programme, or Museum of Islamic Art’s approach during Pergamon Museum’s closure through CulturalxCollabs.
Even when the channel is Instagram, the intent is different: a public record of engagement already taking place, not a cycle of vanishing content.
And maybe that’s the real next step: using social media as part of a ‘distribution’ ecosystem, not destination, and making sure owned channels actually carry continuity.
Hosting requires at least one owned channel—websites, blogs, and newsletters, which are re-emerging as editorial infrastructure rather than marketing add-on.
Not everything will feel perfect (or stable) but the idea is clear: if platforms keep shifting, institutions still need memory, context, and ownership.
Towards digital infrastructure, then.
With AI-generated content spilling across screens and misinformation spreading even more easily, museums and libraries carry an even heavier responsibility as context-builders and memory-keepers.
The urgent question is not where museums should post next, but what kinds of digital relationships they want to sustain, and on whose terms.
These conversations, like communities, are built over time… and sometimes, you’re still typing while the thought is only half done—like you might go back and change one sentence, just to make it more honest.
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