social media – Social platforms are optimized for consumption rather than community, a growing tension as AI makes endless content cheaper and more accessible.
For 60 minutes, a user can scroll through 100 videos, or they can spend that same hour talking to a single person. To most social media dashboards, both sessions are categorized as a success.
But industry leaders are beginning to grapple with a quiet contradiction: the metrics that built the world’s most successful digital products—watch time. views. and daily active users—track consumption. not necessarily human connection. While these platforms have mastered the art of capturing attention. they often fail to foster the kind of community where people return to the same conversations. recognize one another. and feel that their presence matters.
Historically, social media began as a way to engage with people we knew. That changed when recommendation systems proved they could keep users locked in without needing a personal connection at all. The feed shifted from a place where we sought out our friends to a landscape where we rely on an algorithm to find something—anything—to keep us occupied.
This shift has become more pronounced as generative AI lowers the barrier to content creation. With the ability to churn out endless images, videos, and posts, the internet is becoming a place where we are rarely bored, but increasingly isolated.
Consider the experience of watching a musician perform live on a stream. A user requests a song. the artist recognizes her from earlier in the week. jokes about her repetition. and others in the chat ask about a job interview she mentioned previously. That hour produces history. Compare that to the hour spent scrolling. where a user might learn about a stranger’s kitchen organization or a messy divorce. yet emerge having communicated with nobody.
True community thrives on context: inside jokes, shared histories, and the quiet realization that someone is missing when they don’t show up. None of this can be automated or mass-produced for ten million people at once. It requires the deliberate choice to participate rather than just observe.
The challenge for product leaders is that this kind of interaction often looks like a failure on a traditional dashboard. Users who return to the same five people instead of exploring new ones appear less active. A small, loyal group talking to one another for months will never generate the reach of a single viral video.
As technology advances, the ease of filling attention will continue to climb toward zero cost. The real test for the next generation of social products will not be what can be shown to a user next. but who is there when they arrive. For creators and platforms. the hardest goal to achieve is not keeping a user scrolling—it is giving them a reason to stop.
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