Through a Laptop Darkly: Social Media trends for 2023

This month [March] marks the first anniversary of the government's Online Safety Bill being ushered in by Parliament. Just like most other legislation, the bill faces a long groundswell of negative headlines surrounding social media, indicating the sector is already planning to have something of a self-spring-clean in coming months.

One of the most pressing issues is the impact social media has on teenage users. Sometime this month, Meta [owners of Facebook and Instagram] will introduce new controls allowing teenagers to "see less" of certain adverts on Facebook and Instagram. Despite advertising being the biggest source of Meta's revenues, in February they issued another new rule, banning advertisers from viewing young users' gender or the type of posts they've engaged with [only the users' age and location will be shown].

For brands, this will obviously make it much trickier to target ads at teens. Meanwhile, if the Online Safety Bill does pass into law, it will force companies to remove any content promoting self-harm, depicting sexual violence or encouraging suicide, while social media giants will need to impose and enforce strict age limits. MPs have recently added more proposals, including a plan to prosecute senior managers at tech firms with up to two years in jail if they fail to protect children from harmful online content.
 

Twitter, Facebook and TikTok: where we are in 2023

While negative headlines continue to dog social media, there's no denying its usefulness for comms, or its popularity: 57.6 million in the UK alone regularly log on - some 84.3% of the population. For this reason, proclamations that Facebook, Insta and Twitter are now toast are premature.

Take Twitter. Since Elon Musk bought the social networking service for $44bn in October, the platform has been in relative chaos. There are ‘growing concerns' about the malfunctions taking place, said ex-Twitter VP Bruce Daisley to BBC 4, including a significant outage earlier this month that impacted thousands of users. ‘The technology Musk claims to be applying doesn't appear to be working,' says Daisley, ‘largely because he hasn't got the human hands to help … effectively implement it.'
 

And the negative impact of this turbulence isn't confined to Twitter, he adds, but will have a spillover effect onto Musk's other businesses such as SpaceX and Tesla. ‘If he's running one business that appears to be chaotically malfunctioning, it doesn't necessarily reflect well on a car business that he's suggesting can help drive you home when you're falling asleep.'
 

Talk of an exodus to alternative platforms therefore continues, but Mastodon - pretty much the only realistic alternative touted - is not a platform, it's a decentralised network, created in 2016 by German software developer Eugen Rochko. Although some features appear similar to Twitter, it's actually thousands of different servers run by volunteers based on location and interest. You can join only one server - how each is run regarding moderation or conduct depends on who's running it - and short posts, called ‘toots', can only really be seen by those on your server. Mastodon just doesn't have the same centralised global town square feel or reach of Twitter, for better or worse.

At the time of writing, Mastodon had 1.8 million users (down from 2.5 million in December) which pales in comparison with Twitter's almost 400 million users and its 237 million daily active users. By and large, most Twitter users are choosing to stay put, rather than joining other supposed alternatives such as the right-wing platform Parler. 

Considering the twists and turns of the Musk/Twitter saga, however, it's safe to say we can expect the unexpected from the social media landscape. For example, Clubhouse, the audio-only social media platform, was widely trumpeted as the next big thing while we were locked down in our homes during the pandemic. However, it has since fallen out of fashion.

Nevertheless, audio will remain a trend; Twitter is currently looking to further enhance its audio offering with the launch of a new feature enabling Communities admins to create dedicated audio Spaces. It's not a million miles away from Reddit's Reddit Talks audio chat option, and Facebook's Community Audio Channels, although Facebook appears to be scaling back its audio ambitions.

Video remains vital for engagement with audiences of all stripes, but while Facebook and Insta ramped up the likes of Reels, IG Live and Stories to compete with shortform video platform TikTok, TikTok has now announced its move into longform video, intensifying its competition with YouTube. The Chinese-owned company's new feature, Series, will enable certain creators to share videos of up to 20 minutes in length, which will be available for purchase behind paywall.

TikTok's exponential growth - from 9.8 million UK users in 2020 to 14.8 million in 2022 - looks set to continue, with estimates suggesting it could reach 15.9 million this year. 

Its evolution from young people watching dance videos to becoming part of the British social media landscape where you'll find everything from cute cats to activists, from politicians to popstars, has been breathtaking. Yet, its reputation was tarnished just before Christmas, when it was disclosed an internal email from Erich Anderson (general counsel at TikTok's parent company ByteDance) revealed TikTok employees had been spying on reporters covering the company.

Controversy hasn't hampered innovation however, with ByteDance releasing a new app called Lemon8 in February this year. Reportedly created as a rival to Chinese app Xiaohongshu, known as RED in the US, Lemon8 users can post photos and recommendations, which must have detailed captions. UK influencers have been paid to use the app in a move to get it off the ground, but whether Lemon8 will gain the momentum it needs to compete with the likes of Instagram is yet to be seen.
 

Gen Z get genuine

While the prospect of regulation might be forcing tech giants to look at their impact on young users, the digital habits of Gen Z (the average Gen Z-er is forecast to spend 177 minutes on media every day during 2023) indicate they could be looking for a more ‘authentic' alternative to the ‘fake' influencer culture of Instagram and TikTok. 

In September photo-sharing app BeReal became the most downloaded social media app in the UK, reportedly surpassing 50 million users around the world and more than 4.8 million downloads here in the UK. BeReal has a crucial difference to other platforms - with few other features, its main aim is to encourage users to literally ‘be real'. It prompts them to take a picture of themselves with both front and back camera at a randomised moment during the day and post it within two minutes, making it almost impossible to sugarcoat everyday life.

Bigger rivals are already trying to replicate some of BeReal's success, with Instagram and TikTok both already developing copies. As a result, there are some fears that BeReal could fade like Clubhouse, and simply be the latest social media fad. 

According to research, despite having over 50 million users, only 9% of them opened BeReal on a daily basis, compared to the 39% of the 1.44 billion Instagram users who open the app every day and 29% of the one billion TikTok users globally who open the app daily.

In the wake of BeReal's relative success since its 2020 launch, it's expected that new social media platforms may well emerge in 2023, as the trend for consumers rejecting unrelatable content increases in these straightened, uncertain times. Experts believe we'll increasingly be joining ‘closed' communities with like-minded people on the likes of Telegram and Discord - particularly younger generations. 

New business Levellr allows creators, brands and businesses to tap into this trend. CEO and founder Tom Gayner explains: "We are in the midst of a shift from open networks to closed safe spaces. This isn't just seen in the growth of platforms like Discord and Telegram, but on major platforms, with Instagram building on group messaging functionality, Twitter building out Spaces. Social isn't dead, but it is evolving. As the algorithms continue to evolve, creators become increasingly frustrated at lack of data insights into their fanbase, and as social nastiness continues to turn people off, messaging community platforms like Discord are going to move from niche into the mainstream.

"It provides a huge opportunity for people, brands or businesses to understand who their audience actually is, and be authentic, open and transparent with them in a way that is challenging to do on open networks. It creates a beautiful combination of authentic engagement."

Emma Chiu, global director of worldwide trends forecaster Wunderman Thompson Intelligence, agrees. "People are increasingly seeking a truly social network which is equally engaging, safe and upholds values that align with theirs," she says. "The passive days of social media are slowly being upended by a generation wanting to create and be involved. This means they are turning to platforms that offer creative control, connection to like-minded communities and a space where they feel like they can express their authentic selves. As the way people use social media matures, the way brands and businesses connect will need to evolve too. It is less about the disruptive sell and more about the seamless storytelling. People don't want to be advertised at, but they do want to be involved in conversations that matter to them."

The jury remains out, however, on whether there will be any meaningful shift to the metaverse and whether it will be a useful tool for the communications industry. Most experts caution that for now, it's more a case of ‘be aware and plan for the future'

The need for authentic, empathetic, engaging and ultimately understanding communication on social media looks set to be the overriding trend for the immediate future, not least with the cost of living crisis and global unrest unfolding around us. With the latest Edelman Trust Barometer saying people now trust brands and businesses more than governments, perhaps there's an argument for corporate comms to increasingly put societal issues at the heart of everything they do. 

With social media comms strategies set to be affected by tightening regulation of tech firms and the growing demand for authenticity, the message for 2023 is perhaps best summed up by social media entrepreneur and business superstar Steve Bartlett: "The most fundamental principle of any social content is to make people feel something."