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Digital serendipity: who are we without our algorithms?

How to cope with the downfall of social media

Yuna Shin
UX Collective
6 min readNov 19, 2022
It takes two to tango.

Instagram was life. My 12-year-old self once lived life for the gram. After decades of growth, The New York Times reports social media apps are struggling to keep up. The crash of Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram leaves us with a loud boom: is the age of social media ending?

Collectively, we’re fed up with feeling moody and obsessed. Our days start with doom scrolling down digital rabbit holes only to look up and realize it’s no longer daylight. We can’t escape the entangled influence of social media’s recommendation algorithms on our values, beliefs, and attitudes.

In a time of digital feeds and “For You” content, an introduction with my name and city does little to bridge strangers to friends. Each of us in our digital moodscapes wondering if we scrolled upon the same virtual lands. Let’s skip the icebreakers and flash each other our targeted ads.

What do we gain and risk by dancing with the recommendation algorithms?

Where are we?

Make Instagram, Instagram again!

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Published in UX Collective

We believe designers are thinkers as much as they are makers. Curated stories on UX, Visual & Product Design. https://linktr.ee/uxc

Written by Yuna Shin

Seattle based writer who connects the dots between design, contemporary art, & pop culture. yuna-shin.com.

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