No, social media isn't dead. More than two billion people log into Facebook every day, a billion use TikTok every month, and, despite repeated scandals, 250 million use X every day. However, the way we use these platforms has changed, signaling what seems like the beginning of a new era of the internet.

We are on social media every day, in droves. However, we post less and less. Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, acknowledged this fact last year in a podcast: "But you don't share personal moments in feed today, the way you did five or 10 years ago. You share them in stories or in messages more so." In particular, he explained that teenagers were spending most of their time in the app's private messaging, and no longer in its public spaces.

It's a paradigm shift. Facebook's arrival in 2004 represented a big bang, transforming our online habits and ushering in the era of social media – an era in which anyone, with no technical knowledge whatsoever, could publish a text, photo or video for their friends at the click of a button. An era in which we were inclined to indulge, encouraged by the race for likes, and in which the definition of "friends" expanded to the point where we no longer needed to know them. On Twitter, they became "followers," capable of sharing and re-sharing our content with an unknown but ever-growing audience. It was a buzz-driven era that the selfie generation then fully embraced on Instagram. Showing oneself, in photos or videos, became a new language; collecting followers, comments and emoji reactions, a new religion.

'I don't post anymore'

However, the frenzy is running out of steam. "I used to share my whole life online," said Sarah, 36, a saleswoman in the Rhône region of France. "I shared a lot of photos publicly on Facebook. I'd write things like, 'Too lazy to go to class,' or, 'Going to grab a coffee.' That's all changed. Now, I don't post anymore, I don't use my real name, and you can't recognize me from my profile picture. Over time, I realized that posting could impact my professional life, that social media could be used for harassment, or that our data could be exploited in unhealthy ways."

Rayan Hermassi doesn't belong to the same generation. However, at 19, he decided to uninstall all social media apps from his phone, except Snapchat. "When I was preparing for the baccalaureate, I procrastinated too much. I'd get home, I'd have things to do, I'd go on TikTok, and at 1 am I'd realize I hadn't done anything." He kept Snapchat mainly for its messaging feature, a preferred and private place for exchanging ideas with his friends. Like most of them, he never posts publicly. "I don't see the point; I don't want to post content that anyone can see."

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