Social media is in decline – it’s time for HAs to step up in the digital sphere

By Hannah Fearn, freelance journalist specialising in social affairs

Have you stopped using social media? People everywhere are breaking up with their smartphones and falling out of love with social networks. From apps that block access to protect your focus during work hours to meditation podcasts that help you break an evening addiction to the doomscroll, it feels like we’re coming to the end of a digital era.

The rollout of AI is hastening the process. We’re all sick of seeing nothing but slop as we scroll on by, and the ‘dead internet’ theory is taking hold: what if all we’re doing is watching bots producing content to be liked by other bots? Nothing is real and everything is possible.

According to digital marketing consultant Humera Sikanda, social media engagement has dropped by an estimated 30% across all major platforms in the last year. Sikanda cites shifts in the algorithms favouring paid content and media saturation as important factors in this decline, but they’re not the only ones. People are also just bored. Users of social channels are now passive, digesting huge amounts of content, in particular short-form video, without even stopping to ‘like’ it, let alone engage more meaningfully. We’re experiencing digital burnout.

The more fed up we get, the more we tune out, and while this might be great for our mental health, what does it mean for your relationship with tenants? Over the last two decades social networks became a great way to stay in touch with communities, to share information and news and offer support. It’s not an easy decision to walk away.

“[X is] owned and controlled by the extremely right-wing billionaire tycoon Elon Musk who’s used it to forcibly undermine British democracy and promote disinformation”

However, even hosting a profile on some channels is now becoming more difficult for landlords to justify. X (formerly Twitter) is the site most housing organisations still use to reach out to their communities. It’s owned and controlled by the extremely right-wing billionaire tycoon Elon Musk who’s used it to forcibly undermine British democracy and promote disinformation. Its algorithm amplifies content that can lead to community discord in our local areas. That the government is still using it is contemptible; housing associations should take some moral leadership and migrate elsewhere with immediate effect.

This isn’t a scream into the void: there are alternatives. Bluesky – a copy of the original Twitter but with an ethical code – is growing in size and popularity. LinkedIn has moved on from being solely a professional networking site and is growing in reach. While the main Facebook feed has become an orgy of consumerism and influencer culture, it has one tool that’s definitely worth using – Facebook Groups.

Since 2020 the network has put a lot of energy into building this part of the site and it seems that’s paying off. A very unscientific poll of my own behaviour echoes this wider pattern; like many friends, I now rarely use Facebook to keep up with family and friends but use it daily for its group offerings (everything from professional communities to children’s health advice groups). Local government communications expert Dan Slee carried out a more useful analysis in his local area of Braintree, Essex and found Facebook group membership had risen by 40% in a year. Most members were using these sites to help keep on top of local news.

Here’s a great opportunity for housing associations. Adding to the endless AI-generated content on X won’t help you reach tenants, but discovering which hyper-local Facebook groups they’re using might. And if they don’t exist, you can create them. Even better, you can monitor which content engages people most effectively and learn from it to tweak your own creative comms. Social media may be in flux, but leadership in the digital sphere is still crucial. There’s still a chance to step up.