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Many Social Media apps are increasingly viewed as bad for us and toxic for many young people. France, Spain, Greece, Denmark, Slovenia and Indonesia have moved to ban social media for adolescents, following Australia’s move to ban social media for teenagers under 16 years of age. Germany, Britain, and Canada are weighing similar steps. The underlying message is clear - policy-makers need to find an answer for consumer concerns.
But these harms have been going on for more than a decade and the issue goes beyond teenagers. In the United States, a landmark ruling in late March found design features created by Meta and YouTube are harmful and addictive. The decision could force Social Media platforms to re-design key features like algorithms, infinite scroll, and direct messaging. Could Social Media survive these changes?
Social Media has lost social connection
The problem as Ben Moore, US MD of app firm BeReal, sees it is that Social Media platforms have become media-heavy. They are all about the content with very little concern for the social context for that content. He explains:
We need to move away from platforms as engagement traps that are optimized for things that are no longer human, no longer real. We need to bring platforms back to the social motivation of engaging with other people, rather than being optimised for content consumption. The latter is dangerous and it is very important that we move beyond this and really question the architecture of platforms. Apps should be optimised to check in on the people that the user really cares about.
Such authenticity is the ethos of BeReal which is a global app with a base of around 40 million monthly active users in Europe and the US. It works as follows: Every day, a single notification goes out: "It’s Time to BeReal." Users have two minutes to capture the moment as it is, front camera and back camera, simultaneously. According to data and analytics specialist, Nielsen, across EMEA (France, Germany, and the UK), 64% of users say they are likely to open the app as soon as that notification hits (59% in France, 59% in Germany, 76% in the UK), creating a concentrated engagement window where users are online together, active rather than passive.
Moore believes that the challenge to changing Social Media is not technical, saying:
We live in a world with a lot of AI-enabled tools that can write better code. Existing platforms could choose to move away from doomscrolling engagement loops by prioritising product management resources to address the way that content is posted and shared. The constraint here is not technical complexity it is ad dollars because if you change the platform, you potentially impact your monetization model.
Can Social Media monetize engagement without influencers and algorithms?
Of course, this is the nub of the problem – can a Social Media app maintain popularity and make money without using influencers and algorithm-driven engagement loops?
Moore says that at BeReal:
We take a pride in not disrupting the user by intrusive advertising, and make sure that the ads that we are launching work and feel native to the app, so we focus on ads that enable users to share real moments. When you post on BeReal you get served an ad. But users do not want ads that look like ads, so that informs the way that ads are built and designed on the platform.
For example, we did a campaign with an energy drink where when users got their notification that it was time to be real, they saw that something was going on and saw the ad after posting. This was tied in with the Super Bowl kick off and so it amplified a cultural moment that is important to Gen Z who form the majority of BeReal users. This is introducing ads in a way that is relevant to the BeReal brand and the users.
The approach is verified by a Nielsen study that illustrated how BeReal ranked as the most authentic social media platform in EMEA. The Nielsen figures showed that BeReal ranks number one among Social Media platforms for strong purchase consideration and strong ad recall, delivering a 35% and a 23% relative uplift respectively against the social media average.
The study says that “those results are tied to the unique front/back dual-camera format that makes 56% of EMEA users say they are more likely to click on brand advertisements. Overall, one in two BeReal users say they are likely to take action (like visiting a website, searching the product, or purchasing) after watching a targeted ad.”
Moore feels that, “platforms have focused too much on the posting of content, so that engagement is no longer about social contact any more.” He would like platforms to be differentiated between those that are optimised for attention and those that are focused on social connection.
My take
The trust crisis with Big Tech does seem to be rooted with the mis-management or loss of control over content. Cybersecurity firm Human Security has shown that by 2027 AI and bots will be more prevalent posters of content on the Internet than humans. According to BeReal’s own data the majority of its users want content to be clearly labelled if it is created by AI, and do not currently trust social media companies to handle AI responsibly. Moore’s idea that platforms should be categorised by whether they optimise for attention or focus on social connection is intriguing but BeReal’s approach to engaged advertising may prove more immediately influential in the re-design of apps.