The language around the UK Government’s imminent social media ban for under-16s is interesting. Ministers talk about giving children their childhoods back. Putting wellbeing first. Protecting developing minds from something that may be doing them harm.
And that raises an awkward question.
If it’s bad for them, what exactly do we think it’s doing to the rest of us?
Anti-social?
We remember the smoking ban in 2007. Overnight, smoking stopped being the default. People who smoked didn’t necessarily stop, but they had to step outside to do it. The habit became visible and deliberate. Something you chose to do rather than something that simply happened around you.
Is the same shift already happening in our attitudes to social media?
And what will happen when reaching for Instagram feels less like checking your friends’ holiday snaps and more like lighting a cigarette?
“It feels like the cultural mood is changing.”
Sharon Tanton
We don’t know the answer. But it feels as though the cultural mood is changing.
And it’s got us thinking, if social media went the way of smoking, what would it do to the way B2B brands create and communicate content?
If there was no hungry social media beast monopolising the attention of both creators and consumers, what would we all do differently?
What If Social Media Disappeared Tomorrow?
Imagine waking up tomorrow to discover that all social media platforms had vanished. No LinkedIn. No Instagram. No TikTok. No Facebook. No X.
All gone.
For a few days we would all likely panic: marketing plans unravelling, content calendars redundant. Influencers orphaned.
Then — something interesting. We’d probably remind ourselves that there’s a whole universe of marketing outside of social media. Different channels, free from algorithms, though not from graft. And when you change your channels, everything upstream of them changes too. How?
“When you change your channels, everything upstream changes sympathetically.”
Andy Williams
If we can only cost effectively reach a select audience of 500, or 5,000 people, then we’re going to value content that can spark a conversation with a lot more than 1-in-500, or 1-in-5000. We’d back that belief with our own evidence. One piece of sales engagement content — highly tailored, sent not to a crowd but to a deliberately nurtured list of around 1,000 of the right people — prompted 150 conversations by the client’s own count.
So we’re going to respect the creativity, the authenticity, the emotional intelligence required to produce that content. We’re likely going to respect the time it takes to produce too.
Understanding customers, not algorithms
Social media has been a remarkable force for democratising communication. It’s helped small businesses reach large audiences, enabled communities to organise, and given businesses direct access to customers.
But it has also made it beguilingly simple to confuse activity with effectiveness.
Post more.
Comment more.
Engage more.
Feed the machine.
It’s not that we’re saying ‘social is bad’, to be clear. It’s more a reflection that lots of marketing effort and activity is directed towards satisfying the algorithm. Chasing reach. Chasing engagement. Chasing attention.
“Spend more time understanding customers, and less understanding algorithms.”
Mark Waite
Research suggests that company posts on LinkedIn reach only 1.6% of followers (down from 7% in 2021). A page with 10,000 followers gets a single post in front of maybe 160 of them. Of those, perhaps 3.6% react in any way — six or so likes and comments. And the click onward, to something richer like a case study or diagnostic? Just a fraction of that handful. Maybe one or two. Often none. You can do all the work to build a following of 10,000 and the algorithm will still keep most of it from you.
On that evidence, you could argue that social media has disappeared, at least as an organic platform.
So what if we committed more time to understanding customers and less time understanding algorithms? More time creating things worth talking about and less time manufacturing reasons to talk?
Scarcity breeds discipline
It’s so easy to forget that businesses were earning attention, building trust and creating conversations long, long before social media. Some of the biggest names in Big Tech — Apple, Microsoft, Intel, Oracle — grew up in the age before Facebook, when outreach was less instant and more costly. And scarcity bred discipline: when you couldn’t spray and pray, every approach had to earn its keep.
So perhaps we’d see a much bigger investment — heads, hearts and budget — in content and activities that could feel almost radical today:
- Small events.
- Roundtables.
- Communities.
- Newsletters.
- Podcasts.
- Thoughtful direct mail.
- Even handwritten letters.
Not because we’re yearning for the ‘good old days’, but because they can be more thoughtful, helpful and memorable. In a world where everyone can publish instantly and infinitely, scarcity becomes valuable. Attention becomes precious. Human connection becomes the differentiator.
Write less, say more
Could it help mitigate the problem of the ever-growing digital landfill*? Maybe.
The combination of social media and AI can make it seem like the marginal cost of content is basically zero. Which means we’re creating more content than at any point in history. Much of it never really seen or read, never remembered and ultimately, never wanted or needed.
Perhaps if social media disappeared, we’d produce less but think more. Write less but say more.
Of course, this isn’t really an argument for banning social media. It’s more of a curious thought experiment into the ‘what if’ to jolt us out of the lazy habits we’ve fallen into with ‘always on’ social media and mass marketing.
Maybe another interesting question to ask is this: If social media disappeared tomorrow, which parts of your marketing would survive?
The answer probably reveals where the real value lies.
The best brands wouldn’t disappear with the platforms. Their stories would remain, their communities would remain and their customers would remain.
The channels may change but the craft will endure.
*Truth is, there really isn’t a passive, digital landfill. Instead there is a highly complex supply chain which starts with AI training (slyly left out of reported ‘per query’ marginal costs), then inference, storage, replication, transmission, more storage, archiving and so on. The marginal cost of ‘one more piece of content’ is tiny — encouraging us to produce more. The productivity of that content is also tiny — encouraging us to produce more still. However, the total cost in energy, carbon, strained water resources etc is cumulatively enormous.
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