The Era of Antisocial Social Media

Think Facebook private groups.

Without question, the digital campfire trend is firmly on the radar of the big social platforms. “Today we already see that private messaging, ephemeral stories, and small groups are by far the fastest growing areas of online communication,” Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a March 2019 public post, announcing a strategic shift toward more closed, private ... See more

In a 2019 survey from ZAK, a youth-focused creative agency, nearly two thirds of the 1,000 people polled, all under 30, said they prefer to talk in private message threads rather than on open forums and feeds. Sixty percent of respondents stated that talking in private groups means they can “share more openly.”

An example is the private Slack group created by Glossier, created for its best customers to talk about all things beauty & organize meet-ups.

An example is London-based Threads, which has quietly picked up $20M last year with Highland Europe, for its operation which courts millennial, with tailored selections of luxury fashion which it then sells to them directly on services like WeChat, WhatsApp, Snapchat, with a team of human shopping assistants!

Young people crave tight-knit communities, privacy, safety, and a respite from the throngs of masses on large-scale platforms.

The brand credits the group with helping to co-create one of its now-top-selling products.

Americans 12 to 34 years old across several platforms has either leveled off or is waning, while 2019 research from Global Web Index suggests that the amount of time millennial and Gen Z audiences spend on many social platforms is either flat, declining, or not rising as greatly as it has in years’ past.

Some companies have thus responded by adapting texting to mimic the intimacy of personal conversations with friends.

Social platforms are still reporting robust growth — yes, even FB — despite growing opposition. But dig a little deeper, and a more nuanced picture emerges. When you look at who is — and more importantly, who is not — driving the growth of social platforms, a key demographic appears to be in retreat: young people.