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We’re still in the early days of social media. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram are all less than 20 years old.

Big picture, this is just the beginning of social media. And it’s interesting to see the changes in how we’ve been using it since the early days.

The question is how social media culture will continue to evolve in the future to suit our revealed preferences.

In the beginning, Facebook culture was very different. Today, we’re reeling from its unintended consequences.

We’ve institutionalized identity. We’ve outsourced trust to external institutions to tell us the truth about ourselves. This is not just found in social media, but in universities, and net worth figures.

But these institutions aren’t always accurate. The truth is we can’t accurately quantify the subjective.

As humans, we tend to exist through the eyes of others. This is an idea discussed by Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone De Beauvoir.

Something as subjective as identity or self-worth can’t be accurately measured by quantifiable metrics. But it’s ironic that we try to accomplish that with social media.

Perhaps a new social media culture is evolving. One centered around authenticity and failure instead of polished highlights. We see this culture with memes and TikTok. Could this be the next step? How long could it be before then?