When social networks became social media, how they destroyed our communities, and how we rebuild the things that really matter

Look around you!

Where are we all? Where are we now? What has become of us?

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Some time ago I was listening to the BBC Radio 4 programme AntiSocial: The history of nostalgia in which Agnes Arnold-Forster, a historian at Edinburgh University and author of Nostalgia: A History of a Dangerous Emotion shared an interesting insight. In that interview she made the observation that nostalgia is a view of the past that is formed by us, projecting onto it the problems of our lives in the present. My view of the past, of events that occurred some two decades ago, has been shaped by loss and its consequences: loss of belonging; grief over the destruction of my tribe; a crushing isolation that has emerged since. All of this is from the point in time when social networks morphed into social media.

In the early days of blocky text on low res screens, of AltaVista and AskJeeves, of ICQ chat and MSN a quirky little car arrived - a two-seater microcar that generated a real sense of excitement amongst a generation who viewed conventional car design as uninspiring. Funky, weird and eccentric, the people who bought them were similarly wired and a community grew online - the perfect car for the new online generation in a new age that was emerging around us. Search engines acted like funnels where you entered a simple search term, like 'smart car' and before you knew it, a community faced you and said: 'come in.' The online forums were, I suppose, a sort of proto-social network, for they brought together similar minds, values and outlooks. They acted as a bridge between desire, intent and real encounters with real people in real life. Ideas morphed into events, meetups, drive-outs and rallies, as names were added enthusiastically to lists and turnouts were good. New encounters grew into friendships, some of which lasted a lifetime for some; love and marriage for even fewer. Yet those encounters, friendships and shared experiences were forever implanted into our memories, creating the stuff that shaped us forever. Those forums were our home, the smarclubuk, smartmaniacs and smartz: places where we connected, and where happy memories were made.

Move Fast and Break Things sounded like progress but the cynicism, the true intent, was not far beneath the surface. Along came new ways of connecting that were not like the forums and almost instantly one big community across three forums was shattered into dozens of smaller Facebook groups, each treated as a silo. Gone were the competent, skilled and principled administrators of the forums that took so much to build and run, replaced by others, not so principled, who turned them into places where the welcome and sense of belonging, of spontaneity, of camaraderie, were gone. In their place were petty disagreements, pointless posturing, toxic bullying - a poisonous culture set forth from those running them, gratified at the airing of others' grievances and the settling of old scores.

A metaphorical and literal journey into a new community - of sorts - in a different car only revealed the rottenness of our public civic life in the modern social media age. Gone was the civility of the John Cooper and Paddy Hopkirk eras based on the basic values of decency, integrity and generosity. One group with thousands of members once witnessed the descent of one of their own into a mental health crisis, a downward spiral so public witnessed by all. A very public self-immolation, only added to by a very public denunciation by the leader with the kind, benevolent smile so often seen in photographs at charity events; another, manipulating others to attack their enemies, settling scores. Both of them at a charity run with an oversize cheque and where nobody talks to one another - a horror show of narcissism, isolation and cruelty.

All of this for the sake of power, dominance and profit, for moving fast and breaking things certainly did mean that we threw out the baby alongside the bathwater and a classic case of having to be careful of what one wishes for.

People are lost in this new world that Facebook has created, for the algorithms they made and misinformation that they encourage has resulted in a social space that, had there been a real life equivalent, would have been avoided by most of us. Civic engagement has withered away as citizens stare at screens, too addicted to break away unless they have to, looking ahead with blank stares that betray anxiety and distance, pain and loneliness: the utter terror of being left alone with nothing more than their own thoughts.

Towards the end of January 2026 I made the decision to step back, close the portal, and give myself the space that I needed to contemplate how to live a better life, deal with the grief and improve my general wellbeing. My sense is that others are beginning to do the same. Talking to my closest friends indicates a weariness with social media more widely and a boredom with being stuck behind a screen out of habit. Out of all of this a new friendship group has formed - refugees in a messaging app who meet up in real life. Smartmaniacs still exists, although few participate these days. The other two have since closed. Elsewhere forums are beginning to see an up-tick in engagement, and private, hidden groups are forming on WhatsApp; and yet the fragmentation remains.

The only sustainable way forward, now, is to rebuild our civic life by encouraging people to prioritise the use of their time to meeting and helping others, to put their phones down, to look up and look around.

To do that needs us to begin having conversations with others, highlighting the kind of issues that are now well known. That's how it starts, by initiating that conversation. Maybe then we can start to put things back together again.

This essay is a contribution to that process.