Even TikTok has come under fire. The app was supposed to be banned in the US on January 19, but it then released a statement praising Trump for allowing it to continue service after it went dark for a mere few hours. TikTok also sponsored an inauguration party for conservative content creators.
Twenty-two-year-old Emma from Rhode Island (who asked to use a pseudonym to protect her anonymity) says she used to be “a big TikTok consumer.” But the company’s adulation toward the new president prompted her to quit the app for good. “After that clear example of the TikTok executives sucking up to the Trump administration,” she explains, “and most likely using that message as a way to make it seem like Trump saved the app, I didn’t trust it anymore.”
This isn’t the first time users have fled social media as a form of political protest. “People have been resisting these big tech platforms, in part to show their identity,” points out Dr. Minh Hao Nguyen, assistant professor at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research. “In the past, big scandals have also been reasons for people to leave platforms,” she says, highlighting 2018’s Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal, when digital consultants for the Trump campaign were found to have misused Facebook user data. “I think this is another important moment in time, but it’s not necessarily something new.”
What has changed, though, is our relationship to social media in general. John H. Parmelee, professor and director of the University of North Florida’s School of Communication, says there’s been a shift in how we interact with political content. Back in 2012, Twitter users he interviewed for his research said that “a political tweet wasn’t influential if it contained claims that seem outrageous or incorrect. Today, however,” he adds, “outrageous social media posts have become more widespread, accepted, and normalized.”
Our new chaotic social landscape may have us eager to take an extended digital detox, but is it even possible anymore? “I’ve spoken with young adults, and with older adults above the age of 50,” says Dr. Nguyen, “and I think one thing that distinguishes these groups is that the older generations feel less social peer pressure to be constantly online and connected.”
With Trump’s presidency impacting the entire world, the dilemma also extends to young people outside the US, like David, 24, from Ireland, who deleted his Instagram due to the company’s new fact-checking policy. “It is a pain to lose that contact with my friends and potentially isolate myself a bit because of it,” he says.
Quinn says he also has a “complicated” relationship with Instagram for this reason. “I want to know what’s going on in my friends’ lives, even if I don’t live near them anymore,” he says. “In an ideal world, we all get off social media, but until then I have this underlying fear of missing critical updates.”
It’s not only the social aspect that causes people to linger on these platforms, though; it can also be a practical nightmare to go off them cold turkey. Meta, with its monopoly on the social media market, has entangled us in its web. People furnish college apartments using Facebook Marketplace; communicate with colleagues on WhatsApp; and find out when their favorite artist is going on tour from Instagram posts. To withdraw from these platforms completely can severely alter the way we live our lives.
