THINK FORWARD 2025

The internet has become a treadmill of micro-trends, notifications and noise. Social media – once a place that enriched the lives of users – now exhausts.

Thankfully, a movement is here. New audiences are emerging, determined to reclaim the joy of social. People are pushing back against the prevailing culture of “more” – more content, faster trend cycles, ever higher, more unattainable goals – to make the internet fun again. Enter The Liveable Web: separating joy from progress and prioritising slower consumption.

Here are the key trends playing out across The Liveable Web right now.

Primal Renaissance

After years of cultural sanitisation and emotional suppression, 2024 saw a return to rawness, gore, sleaze and hedonism; the social landscape is embracing messiness again.

Low-stakes social

With digital and IRL worlds alike beginning to overwhelm, audiences want brands to provide lighter online culture – a refuge from the emotional labour of day-to-day.

Intentional consumerism

As culture becomes more critical of consumerism, people want brands to help them find more sustainable ways to derive joy from their spending habits.

Modern mythmaking

Move over, traditional media; creator-led content now leads the way in responding to (and shaping) popular culture. The result? An Easter egg web in which audiences are digging deeper into entertainment than ever before.

New intimacies

Social platforms once existed to connect us. Now they prioritise keeping us entertained. In an increasingly segregated world, audiences are craving togetherness – and pushing for a new internet that bonds us again.

Methodology

We Are Social’s Cultural Insights team used qualitative and cultural analysis, with desk research validated by its own experts in four continents. This was supported by a survey of 500 marketing decision makers across the US and UK.

With this input, we used thematic analysis to identify five emergent trends that are shaping the future of social media.

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