can social media apps connect us in real life?

I've been having more conversations about the possibilities (and failures) of social media lately, especially since I've been telling more folks about LUDDENITES. A large part of me does think it's absurd that I want to actually make another social media platform in this moment of so much enshittification (I absolutely hate this term, by the way, but it's what a whole lot of people have decided to keep using...).

I don't think just any new social media platform will make the world better or even more enjoyable. From Hive to Bluesky to Threads to Spoutible (is anyone even on that thing?), there are a ton of "new" options to try, but none of them have really gained a critical mass of users. More importantly, none of them are particularly enjoyable to use. I've been seeing people move from those apps back to Elon's X, and some even over to LinkedIn (dear god...).

Part of what I feel like is missing — and has been missing for a long time — with social media apps is the ability to connect us in real life. OK, this is clearly an idea that's been around since damn near the 1990's, with folks asking if Internet communications (anything from various IRCs to The Well to forums to all the options that came next) actually make us more connected or less. I can understand the arguments that online technologies have made us more isolated from each other and less social (see also: Sherry Turkle's Alone Together). To any outsider, it seems like we're just engrossed in our phones instead of the world around us, and today, we're not even really looking at our phones to talk to other people. Rather we might be scrolling aimlessly, unknowingly talking to bots, or literally having entire conversations with generative AI systems. But I've always rejected the idea that these technologies are completely isolating us. We're not all more introverted, we're not all more incapable of making human connections with one another. I think how we connect and what medium we connect on has changed, sure, but that doesn't make these connections any less real, meaningful, or organic. And in many ways, I think it's enriched the relationships we have in our "real lives" (as if it's possible these days to clearly separate our online lives from our offline lives).

I still hold the belief that it's possible to have social media apps that connect us in genuine and meaningful ways. I think a lot about my own experiences, whether on pre-Elon Twitter, or on Facebook in the early 2010's. These platforms allowed me to (1) meet new people and make new connections that have transformed my life, and (2) keep in touch with people I've met and stay connected with them over the years. It makes me ask the question, at what point does social media stop connecting us? I think it would be naive to say that there's a definitive, clear-cut moment, feature, or affordance that tells us when connection becomes isolation. I'd wager that both are constantly happening at the same time, just as there are always trade-offs and opportunity costs with however we spend our time. When we connect in one way, we might be disconnecting in another. And that... might not always be a bad thing. Sometimes it's nice to disconnect, by reading, by listening to music, by scrolling even. But that shouldn't be the entirety of our social media experience. They're social for a reason, right? Or at least we hope they are... I'm sure there are social media researchers out there exploring the nuances of this question, but I'm more concerned with how we can build something thoughtfully right now. Because I think a lot of our social media platforms today have failed at connecting us, and to put it bluntly, they suck. But I truly believe we can do better.