I’m A Social Media Manager and Sometimes I Hate Social Media

To hate something is to know it completely. To hate something is to know it so fully that you’re able to discern the parts that you love from the parts that need to improve. Hate is not the opposite of love, but rather an amalgamation of the things you love about something and the parts that you know could be better. 

Over time, those parts that need improvement start to eat away at you until all that’s left is a roughly sculpted form that looks like hate on the surface but conceals the hardened edges of what used to be love.

These are the thoughts of a social media manager who sometimes hates social media. 

I Will Always Love You

To always love something is to sometimes hate it. You can’t love something for a long time and never have feelings of hatred toward it at some point. One of the reasons I can say that I occasionally hate social media is because I remember the earlier iterations of each platform that were significantly more enjoyable than the warpath it is now. 

I distinctly remember creating my Facebook account in the summer of 2008, which was already considered late to the game. I returned home from an exchange trip abroad where it became obvious to me that I was so behind the times and the only way I would be able to stay up to date with my new friends would be through this exciting new medium called Facebook. Adults were still not allowed on the platform, so it provided a temporary haven for teenagers to interact with each other without prying eyes. 

The current iteration of my personal Instagram account dates back to 2015. The only reason it’s not earlier is because I deleted my previous Instagram handle and started anew that year. I was in college so I had a right to be dramatic and mysterious. 

I remember when social media was something you decided to opt in to because it sounded like a fun club to be in, whereas now it feels like something mandatory to participate in for keeping up on current events, food recalls, or what’s happening with your old friends. It’s also a basic entry point for marketing almost any business. What used to feel like a “if you know you know” is now a “your livelihood depends on your participation.” 

It reminds me of the way that TikTok in 2021 felt like a fun fever dream of a man chopping wood and everyone recommending the same romance books that we’ve since learned are terrible. When TikTok went from something that people were looking down their noses at to being a promotional night on Dancing with the Stars, you know the platform has lost its original spark. (The promotional episode earnestly discussing how TikTok has changed so many lives set against the backdrop of the U.S. algorithm being sold to Oracle felt like a forced and cringey ad campaign.)

Like with real life, I know that we can’t live in the “good ole days” forever. These platforms were always going to grow and evolve, which is inevitable to feed the machine of required neverending growth. Instagram recently reached 3 billion monthly active users, for instance. Infinite expansion is always the goal. 

What I Currently Hate About Social Media in 2025

The thing that I love about social media is that it’s ever-changing. What drives me crazy about social media is that it’s ever-changing. The rate at which preferred posting methods change is getting faster and faster. Last week it was photo carousels with a song, this week it’s skinny horizontal videos. And don’t you dare be late on posting a trend, otherwise Marketing LinkedIn will publicly make fun of your brand. 

To pay homage to the elusive one that started it all, MySpace, I narrowed down my list of what I currently hate about social media in 2025 to my top three:  

• The way the platforms change their main pillars of function to chase each other’s success: Instagram copying Stories from Snapchat, Instagram promoting Reels after watching TikTok’s party from the outside, TikTok taking after Pinterest and making videos visually searchable
• Instagram changing from 1:1 posts to 4:5 posts, only to quickly change to 3:4 posts, but if you upload 3:4 posts in Meta Business Suite it will give you an error and tell you to crop your photos to 4:5
• The way AI has contributed to the rise of slop on every platform, further deteriorating the user experience and directly contradicting the origin of these platforms. The entire point of scrolling on Pinterest is to get inspired by what’s possible, not by what was fabricated in a data center in Memphis that’s simultaneously poisoning the local community. 

But above all, I will always hate Meta Business Suite as a whole. 

The Herd of Elephants in the Room

The thing about being honest about sometimes loving and sometimes hating social media is acknowledging the untouchable heights these platforms have grown to and the destruction they leave in their wake. 

One minute we’re uploading completely unedited photo albums from our digital cameras to Facebook, the next minute we’re allowing propaganda from Russia across all major social media platforms before the 2016 election. One minute we’re “poking” each other, the next we’re watching livestreamed murders. One minute we’re heavily filtering our photos with VSCO presets, the next minute we’re finding out that the early employees of the platform manually chose which posts to push on the “popular” page. On TikTok, one minute I’m learning about a small business I can support and the next minute the platform’s U.S. algorithm is being sold to the highest bidder along with our data. 

Fast forward to today and these platforms are riddled with Facetune, AI images, catfish, and the perpetuation of impossible beauty standards. It’s no wonder that time spent on Instagram is associated with higher levels of body dissatisfaction in girls and young women.

Beyond turning ourselves into caricatures, everything has been reduced to a shopping opportunity. No, I don’t want to perform a visual search of the video I’ve paused on TikTok. No, I don’t want a shirt made of 100% polyester that will look nothing like the picture, deform after its first wash, and end up in the trash just as fast as the impulse purchase was made. 

Algorithms have paved the way for rewarding bad behavior. After all, extremes are what garners the most engagement: violence, explicit content, anger. Negativity has been proven to result in higher engagement, leading many creators to turn to rage-baiting to make their living. And I haven’t even touched on the higher rates of depression with potential for suicidal outcomes amongst children and teenagers who are on social media. Or how fun and useful Twitter used to be back in the day before it was abducted and destroyed by the big bad wolf of billionaires dressed as a vigilante tech grandma. 

Frankenstein’s monster has been allowed to grow uncontained for so long that we now have this giant beast dragging all of us around while we hang on for dear life. The beast has gotten so big that the platforms deem it’s out of their hands to manage. 

Why do I get daily messages from faux Meta employees saying that my content violates their terms of service? Why are there scam Facebook ads selling products that will never arrive? Why are the only inappropriate comments on my clients’ accounts from men finding something sexual to say about anything? 

My personal favorite experience on social media is when you report an account for spam only to have it instantly deemed by an AI bot to not violate the platform’s terms of service.

The Best of Social Media

This is the lull in the party where you go outside for some fresh air, even if it’s the middle of winter. I need a breather. 

Now that I’ve detailed what I don’t like about social media, it’s time to turn it into a compliment sandwich and end with a few things I do like about these platforms: 

• Thanks to a string of dead laptops, the only way I have most of my old pictures from high school is that they’re preserved in Facebook albums
• How I still have the same Snapchat account from college that I use to keep up with a random selection of people that I don’t get to see regularly otherwise
• How TikTok has introduced me to some of my favorite things, both physical and cerebral, that have drastically improved my life
• How social media has opened up entirely new career paths for so many people, including myself
• The treasure trove of items I’ve found on Facebook Marketplace 

But most of all, I love how social media helps us find what we’re looking for. It satisfies the reason I studied public relations in the first place–the love of sharing a good story with someone. 

Being a social media marketer isn’t about virality, likes, or followers, but rather about being excited about what you’re sharing, trying to improve other people’s lives with it, and using your voice for good. 

Where Do We Go From Here?

The answer to loving something so much that you’ve made a career out of it and now have occasional feelings of hatred toward it is that you want it to change. There is room for improvement. You know that it can be better, they just have to want it for themselves.