It was in early December when I stumbled upon an interesting post on Facebook. The caption read: “2011 Facebook was simple. Blue top bar, chat box in the corner, pokes, gifts, long wall posts, slow but real. No reels, only memories.”
Indeed, it is nostalgic when I think about it. I started using it in 2009, and it has changed so much. Not just Facebook, but Instagram as well, Twitter X, and others. Then I came to a realisation: I found myself withdrawing from those platforms more often. Perhaps I’m just getting older, but I think the truth is that social media platforms nowadays are worse than ever.
So… Why Did Social Media Become Worse?
Facebook was so simple, back then
Just for disclosure, my opinion on this article is solely mine. It does not represent the whole TechNave team. And let me just say it again outright: social media today isn’t what it used to be. It’s louder, faster, more commercialised, and yet somehow more shallow or emptier.
If you’ve ever opened your feed in 2025 and felt a strange mix of boredom and exhaustion, you’re not imagining it. Social media has genuinely lost its “soul”, the priorities have changed, and so have the algorithms. My friends, whether you realise it or not, have changed in response. And yes, I did my homework, and many studies and research back all of this up, so please do read on.
1. The Feed Isn’t Yours Anymore, It Belongs to the Algorithm
Instead of friends and family, I’m only seeing strangers and unwanted notifications. Sigh.
There was a time when Facebook and Instagram reflected your social circle. Open the app, and you’d see your cousin’s graduation photos, your friend’s new cat, or a colleague’s weekend trip. In 2025, you’re more likely to see a random dance video, a stranger’s motivational clip, or a shop you’ve never heard of trying to sell you something.
This shift wasn’t accidental. Meta’s internal documents, revealed during a 2025 antitrust trial, showed a steep decline in the amount of “friends and family” content shown to users. Instead, recommendations dominate the feed because they generate more consistent engagement than your real-life relationships. If the algorithm thinks it will keep you scrolling longer, it gets pushed to the top, even if you don’t care about it.
2. Meta Isn’t Doing Anything About Scam Ads?
Image generated by Reuters
This has been a long-time issue in Malaysia, as it has already reached a point where regulators are openly frustrated. Since 2023, Communications Minister Fahmi Fadzil has wanted MCMC to meet Meta regarding the rampant scam Facebook ads, and until now, nothing has been resolved.
The financial impact on Malaysians has been severe. Since 2021, Malaysians have lost a whopping RM302 million to scams on Facebook and Instagram. To make matters worse, there was a leaked document reported by Reuters that Meta earned about $16 billion from advertisements linked to scams and banned goods across its platforms. This strongly suggests that Meta is prioritising profit over the goodwill of scammed victims.
3. People Are Feeding the Ragebait Algorithm (without realising it)
Besides scam ads, ragebait news is very prevalent online. Before this, it was all about clickbait news, but this is even worse! Ragebait or luring readers to become outraged has become part of our cultural vocabulary, so much so that publisher Oxford University Press even named “rage bait” as its 2025 Word of the Year, a clear sign of how online outrage has become mainstream.
Unbelievable
According to communication scholars, ragebait thrives because it hits the exact “engagement sweet spot” that algorithms are built to reward. Outrage, shock, anger, those emotional triggers lead to more reactions (comments, shares, resentments), and those signals tell the algorithm “this is content people interact with.” So it pushes those posts to more users, even if the content is inflammatory, divisive, or outright hateful.
In other words, hateful, outrageous posts get boosted, even though many users report they don’t actually prefer such content. Yale University also found that users who were rewarded with social feedback for outraged content became more likely to use emotional and moral-outrage language in future posts, which explains why so many content creators do and say stupid things online on purpose. Moreover, another 2024-2025 study on younger users found that topics that began as mildly controversial become increasingly extreme the more the user interacts, turning a curious feed into a “hate spiral”.
With these studies (and maybe your own experiences online), they certainly prove that feeds are no longer curated with just your friends or interests at heart. For many users, what was once about connection has become about conflict, anger, and clicks, and the algorithms behind your feed are quietly feeding on it.
4. “Doomscrolling” Brainrot Content
A sight that is getting too common nowadays
(image generated by AI)
Speaking of ragebait content, another concerning matter is brainrot content, particularly in short-form videos. Short-form video has changed everything, and TikTok’s influence forced every major platform to adopt endless-scroll short videos. This resulted in a move that pushed quantity over quality, virality over meaning, and speed over substance.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to open any app today and notice how much content feels recycled. The same audios, same memes, same formats, same “life hacks”, same motivational clips. Much of it is reposted several times across various platforms. Some of it is AI-generated filler with no purpose. Entire accounts are dedicated to scraping TikTok content and reuploading it elsewhere.
Analysts warn that when platforms are driven purely by engagement metrics, originality dies and low-effort content dominates. The sad part is that users feel it (including you), scrolling more but enjoying it less. The entertainment is fast but forgettable, the brain is stimulated but unsatisfied, and to add insult to injury, some parents are actually letting kids mindlessly “doomscroll” short-form videos with little to no supervision.
5. The AI-Slop is Misleading Us Down a Path of Misinformation
Seriously, the audacity
In relation to brainrot content, AI-Slop is another major frustration that contributes to the volume of low-quality, automated content on our feeds. The term has gained enough cultural traction that Merriam-Webster even named slop as its own Word of the Year, defining it as low-quality digital content mass-produced by artificial intelligence that overshadows genuine human voices and clutters social platforms.
Research and commentary on this phenomenon suggest that generative AI is now being used at scale to create huge quantities of lightweight posts, images, and videos that lack meaningful originality or value, but are engineered to trigger engagement signals that algorithms love. Studies of AI-generated misinformation also show these posts spread rapidly and are often harder to distinguish from real content than traditional misinformation. For example, my wife was literally tricked by an AI-generated video of Zootopia 2 music video, and she even asked me if Home Alone 6 was really coming in 2026.
You may laugh at my wife for not knowing how to distinguish the fakeness of AI-generated content. But get this: MOST CASUAL PEOPLE CAN’T. Studies of AI-generated misinformation highlight how easy it is to mass-produce fake or misleading content tailored to capture attention. Sure, there are netizens online who are witch-hunting AI-generated content and even YouTube took down two channels for violating the policy of releasing thousands of fake AI movie trailers. But because human users tend to engage more with shocking or emotionally charged posts, the algorithm interprets that as “good” content.
6. People Are Exhausted with Too Many Social Media Platforms, and Studies Confirm It
How many social apps are you juggling?
As mentioned, every major platform has its own short-form video section now. A perfect example of this is YouTube Shorts chasing the success of TikTok, and what used to be a photo-sharing app (Instagram) is now pushing Reels content more than ever. Also, every popular app has its own digital store.
If you are a content creator or someone managing several platforms at once, you surely must have felt exhausted. Studies in 2025 show that users now manage close to seven different social platforms monthly, which only adds to the feeling of fragmentation and fatigue. And, if opening any of the platforms now feels like a chore to catch up on content for the sake of it, instead of a pleasure, you’re not alone.
Research shows that the constant demand for attention, the rapid-fire content, and the emotional overload lead to irritability, anxiety, and burnout. Many users report feeling more drained after scrolling than before they opened the app. But there is good news: psychologists found that even short breaks (as short as two to three weeks) can significantly improve mental well-being, reduce stress, and restore emotional balance.
What Can We Actually Do About It?
Although there are still a few gems with genuine posts shared by friends and families, social media may no longer be a space for sharing posts or staying connected, as seen by mega corporations and advertisers. With the pointers shared above, it has become a space for scams, low-quality and ragebait posts. I don’t know about you, but I can no longer trust that a random promoted ad or “too-good-to-be-true” offer on Facebook or Instagram is legitimate. In fact, many are actively harmful.
It’s not just the high volume of scam ads, but for many Malaysians, using social media increasingly carries emotional or psychological costs (noise, fatigue, content overload). Even though social media feels broken, there are still ways to use it without letting it drain your sanity. Perhaps we can actually take a page out of PewDiePie’s 180 lifestyle change (aka Felix Kjellberg), who was arguably the most successful YouTuber of all time with the most subscribed channel for years, until he got married, moved to Japan and raised a family there.
Quick Google search results will tell you that Felix simply walked away from social media and only makes videos when he feels inspired. No burnout, no drama, and choosing peace over pressure without the algorithm controlling him. While not everyone can just abandon social media completely, we can choose to:
- Curate our feed intentionally and remove accounts that don’t inspire or add value.
- Switch to chronological feeds so we can decide what we want to see, rather than letting an algorithm decide for us.
- Move real conversations into smaller, private spaces where the Internet noise doesn’t overwhelm us.
- And the last one, we can support creators directly by subscribing or tuning in to their channels first (like TechNave, lol), instead of relying solely on platform algorithms on your general feed, which helps preserve genuine creativity online.
As we head into 2026, maybe it’s time we give ourselves a digital detox
(image is half-generated by AI)
If Felix, the biggest creator in history, can leave on his own terms, not the internet’s, then we can too. We also just have to accept that the social media of the 2010s isn’t coming back. So instead of waiting for platforms to magically improve, we can choose how we want to balance our real and digital lives, and not let the algorithm decide for us. Going out to touch grass once in a while wouldn’t hurt either.
But what do you think? Do you also feel the same way as I do? Do let us know, and stay tuned for more tech articles that matter only at TechNave.com.
