Is social media dead? That seems to be the big question of 2025. As billionaire-owned platforms grow increasingly vibeless, more young people are switching to burner phones, app-blockers, and MP3 players to curb their internet use. The shift raises doubts about the future of the social media giants of the past –and the toll they’ve taken on our attention spans, screen time and sanity.

In a recent piece for Vogue Business, writer Amy Francombe explored how high-end fashion is shifting from digital to physical experiences, mirroring the TikTok virality of trends like ‘having a life core’ and Gen Z’s ‘analogue bags’ (literally a tote bag filled with books, puzzles, notebooks, activities). “People are really turned off by technology right now,” Catherine Goetze notes.

However, not all of us want – or can afford – to log off completely. Going totally offline is a luxury, and while city life might offer endless opportunities to socialise IRL, it’s not quite the same if, say, you’ve been banished to the outskirts of Burton-on-Trent after a string of unfortunate life events. Maybe touching grass just sets off your hayfever.

Perhaps a healthier practice is simply to engage more discernment with our wider internet habits – to seek out alternate pockets of community on newer, unsullied platforms. But ultimately: where do we go? Where are the cool people actually hanging out online? As someone whose entire life would’ve been completely different without the internet, I eagerly took on the quest to explore a new generation of ad-free, slop-free social platforms – a hopecore offering for fellow lifelong being-on-the-computer enjoyers.

ARE.NA

Starting with a platform that’s already been around for a while might seem counterintuitive – but Are.na really is that girl. “Are.na is 14 years old and still in its creation phase,” founder Charles Broskoski tells me, describing it as an enriching mix of both Wikipedia and Tumblr. The site functions like a communal file system, where users build libraries of references and ideas into themed collections.

Created by a small, independent team of writers and artists, Are.na is inherently appealing to right-brained thinkers. “We have a name for the ideal type of person who uses Are.na: the ‘connected knowledge collector’,” Broskoski says. “It basically means someone who is super curious, who is looking at the world with curiosity and who takes joy in connecting dots.”

The platform is built around “blocks” (pieces of content) and “channels” (essentially folders). “People use this very basic structure to do research, make moodboards, log dreams, take notes, assemble photo albums, and a million other things that we’ve never thought of.” What’s more is that there are no personalised algorithms and suggested content, and even better: no ads! “Social platforms play a large part in determining how we perceive the world,” Broskoski says. “So how they function plays a part in determining how the world actually works.”

COSMOS

“Cosmos is your space to dream,” says CEO Andy McCune of his new online utopia, built for users with a curatorial eye. Inspired by the endless scroll of Tumblr that once helped him dream his way out of his hometown, McCune wanted to recreate that feeling of imaginative escape. “It came from wanting a version of that feeling again,” he explains, “a corner of the internet where you can dream up a new world, a new life, a new you – through images.”

Organising your inspiration into clusters, your profile organically grows into a living feed of your taste where you can collaborate with others, follow them, “or just wander through their worlds.” Although those working in creative industries are naturally drawn to this way of digital scrapbooking, Cosmos offers something valuable for anyone interested in exploring and refining their taste. It’s less about doomscrolling, more about intentional discovery. And unlike most corners of the internet, where content is endlessly reposted without credit, Cosmos prioritises context, with captions that include the original artist, publish date, and more.

“It’s peaceful, inspiring,” McCune explains. “There’s no ads or algorithmic sludge, no AI slop.” Other platforms, he says, can feel “like Times Square, with hundreds of thoughts competing for attention at once.” Cosmos is intended as an antidote to that: “a pocket of quiet where inspiration gets the conditions it needs to become something incredible.”

Although a lot of the legacy platforms feel like an exercise in attention seeking, he notes that the internet is still an integral space for self-expression. “The internet can be a place for the parts of you that don’t fit neatly into the rest of your life,” he says. “It’s also this vast, generative space: a studio, a sketchbook, a community. These spaces are never just online. They’re where ideas take shape before they spill out into the real world.”

NINA PROTOCOL

You know the day when half of Instagram posts their Spotify Wrapped, and the other half whinges about its company ethics and asks for alternatives that aren’t Apple Music? Well, here’s a fresh alternative – and it’s good news for both artists and fans alike.

“Anyone can upload their music on Nina immediately and for free,” co-founder Eric Farber tells me. “No distros required. Artists can set their own price, edition size, and include bonus material.” For listeners, “music is free to listen to, and there is a small fee on purchases that is distributed to the community.”

Founded in 2021 by Farber, Jack Callahan and Mike Pollard, everyone involved in the independently owned streaming platform has roots in DIY music scenes. “We had the idea for an equitable, community-driven place for people to share and discover music,” Farber says. The platform’s blockchain base enables artists to retain control over their works and revenue, while consumers don’t have to worry about their data being sold, as all data is stored publicly.

PERFECTLY IMPERFECT

You’ve likely come across Perfectly Imperfect’s “A Taste of Taste“ on Instagram – the Klein-blue and primary yellow posts spotlighting your favourite artists, actors, and underground icons as they share their top cultural picks. Designed by Vivi Hayes, the format began as an extension of their Substack, featuring everyone from Charli xcx, Finn Wolfhard and Hilary Duff, to IYKYK names like writer Biz Sherbert and musicians like FCUKERS and Suzy Clue. The series also has a nightlife supplement, pairing nightlife snaps with each subjects’ recommendations. But Perfectly Imperfect has so much more to offer in addition to “A Taste of Taste”.

Type in “PI.FYI”, into your App Store, and you’ll find a human-curated social media platform with over 200,000 users. It’s a social magazine promising a space that emulates “how the internet used to feel.” In addition to creating a profile and posting, users can invite their fellow netizens to their IRL happenings through the events tab, which features club nights, DJ sets, readings and all sorts. “My goal was to capture what made something like Facebook Events appealing in my youth,” founder Tyler Bainbridge told Dazed earlier this year. “You could see a friend’s birthday party or housewarming in the same place as DIY shows on your college campus or an underground rave: a lot of that was on Facebook.”

SILK

Promising a new kind of curated internet, Silk started out as an Instagram account in 2021, where founder Zane Kind shared his interests in techwear and fashion subcultures while working at Drake’s Nike sublabel NOCTA v,ia his creative agency, Dream Crew. Eventually Kind dropped his own fleece jacket, which sold out within 24 hours, thanks to like-minded gorpcore subculture fans closely following his journey of the garment’s creation process.

“It was cool that people were interested in the clothes I was making,” Kind tells me over Zoom. “But what’s weirder is that I’m not a brand!” Realising there was something in building a subculture online, he and his co-founder, Greg, created a new, ‘post-platform’ platform.

Silk works by allowing users to organically create dynamic multimedia moodboards, or “webs”, prioritising authenticity over virality. It’s a curation-driven platform where there are no ads. AI-generated content isn’t encouraged, unless there’s a strong curatorial reasoning for it. “We try to take our hands off and let the system decide what’s cool and what’s not,” Kind says. “But I don’t think generative AI is very cool.” Today, the Silk community has 2,000 tester users (with an average age of 23), with 11,000 eagerly awaiting entry. Its official public launch is set for early 2026.

For those who aren’t opposed to grass-touching, Kind describes how the future of social media will “have an emphasis on bringing people together, not just online.” Putting faces to the names (and seeing their outfits!) are the moments he enjoys most, and Silk are plotting some future events and meetups for their members. “Online spaces are more important than they’ve ever been,” says Kind. “It’s our best tool for connecting with people who aren’t in our local sphere and connect over something you care about, without being confined by geography. I don’t think there’s ever been a better time to be online than right now.”