Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, X (formally Twitter), and TikTok have made front-page news recently, though the front page may mean “trending” on social media. Certainly, politics, personal relationships and societal attitudes have all been affected by social media over the past 20 years. Do we even remember how each got started? Also, are these platforms addictive? Finally, what’s next in the social media world? Let’s explore.

How did they get started?

Meta: Facebook started as Facemash in 2003. Designed to allow Harvard students to comment on the attractiveness of female Harvard students, it only lasted two days. Pictures were taken from sorority websites, which was illegal, and Harvard shut down the website. Zuckerberg and allies then regrouped and introduced Facebook in January 2004. Originally, it was open only to college students. Facebook was unique in that people had to use their own names on their accounts and could not use aliases.

Their chief competition was Myspace, which also launched in 2003. Myspace beat Facebook to achieve a global audience and was especially appealing to musicians as a place to showcase their original works. The platform was sold and resold multiple times, and in the process, began to lose memberships. Facebook surpassed Myspace in 2008 as the most popular social network. Myspace exists today only as an archival space for music.

Another Meta property is Instagram. It was started in 2012 as mainly a photograph and video-sharing site. Meta bought it for $1 billion in cash and stocks in 2012.

In 2024, Meta’s total revenue was $164.5 billion. Facebook has around 3.07 billion global monthly users and Instagram’s reach is 2.4 billion people around the world. Recently, Meta announced it would no longer use fact-checkers to monitor Facebook posts, which has stirred up controversy.

X, formally known as Twitter: Jack Dorsey started Twitter in 2006 as a Short Message Service (SMS) and it was sometimes known as a miniblog. Ashton Kutcher was the first person to accumulate 1 million followers. Twitter became recognized as a news source when Janis Krums published a picture of passengers on the wing of US Airways flight 1549 as it floated in the Hudson River in 2009.

In 2022, Elon Must bought Twitter for $44 billion. He renamed it X, and controversy has plagued his ownership, including massive staff layoffs, releasing Twitter files and pulling back any pretense of fact-checking for truthfulness and accuracy. As of Sunday, Feb. 2, the National Transportation Safety Board announced it would only update the press with information related to the airplane crashes in Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia through posts on X, so X seems to have become an extended arm of a governmental agency.

X had 611 million users in 2024. It has been reported that X’s worth is about $9.4 billion, which is an 80% drop from the original purchase price of $44 billion.

TikTok: One of the newer social media platforms, TikTok is a combination of three separate apps. First, there was Musical.ly, which began in Shanghai in 2014. Users filmed and shared short lip-sync videos. ByteDance, a Chinese firm, saw a great business opportunity and introduced its version in 2016 called Douyin. By 2018, ByteDance had bought Musical.ly and combined it with Douyin to form TikTok using the short-video format. Its algorithm tracks what users watch and then offers similar videos.

There are three aspects of the controversy surrounding TikTok, especially in the U.S. There is a fear that ByteDance is collecting personal data that could be shared with the Chinese government, thus raising security and privacy issues. Secondly, there are worries that TikTok could easily spread disinformation; and lastly, it seems to be addictive.

TikTok has 1.9 billion users across the globe.

Why is social media addictive?

Evidently, social media posts often arouse our brains’ reward systems by releasing dopamine in response to comments and likes on our posts, notifications that we have a new comment or just seeing if there is a new post that might be interesting. Dopamine is often called the “feel-good” chemical, and the reaction to social media is similar to what happens in a gambling and drug addiction.

The constant updating of information, the 24/7 easy access to posts through our digital devices and the fear of missing out (FOMO) all lead to the endless scrolling so many people find themselves lost in. As mentioned above, TikTok shapes a user’s viewing by presenting material similar to what they have already watched.

Test yourself — can you go 24 hours without checking your Facebook, X, Instagram or TikTok account?

What’s next on the horizon in the social media world?

As we’ve seen, social media is always evolving. Startups hope they can corner the market and make their fortunes just as Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey and other tech entrepreneurs did. Here are some platforms to explore:

• Mastodon is somewhat similar to Facebook: joinmastodon.org.

• Bluesky, an alternative to X/Twitter: bsky.app/.

• Here’s a link to several more alternatives: backlinko.com/new-social-media-platforms.

One could certainly write a lengthy book on the rise of social media in the first quarter of the 21st century. YouTube, LinkedIn, WhatsApp and other social media platforms are not mentioned in this article. They offer other perspectives on social media. One thing is for sure: We all are participating in a major historical change to the way people communicate. Future generations will analyze and judge our use of the platforms and how we let them affect our culture.

BoomerTECH Adventures (boomertechadventures.com) helps boomers and older adults navigate the digital world with confidence and competence. Active boomers themselves, they use their backgrounds as Maine teachers to support individuals and groups with online courses through Maine Adult Education (tinyurl.com/BTAclasses) articles, videos and presentations to organizations upon request.