Dear Meta,
We’ve been friends for a very long time at this point. More than a decade of my life has been photographed and shared with you. I’ve grown and changed as you have in small almost imperceivable ways that are only visible from the vantage point of time. I love you! I always have. I check my TimeHop app daily to reminisce about our time together. I even secretly used my friend’s Facebook account back before my mom would let me have one of my own. We have a long history together. But…recently…things have changed.
It seems like you just don’t know who you are anymore. You’ve always been such a consistent presence in my life, but now the changes feel constant. I know you’ve tried to better yourself and roll with the times, and some of those changes have been good! Remember when you first introduced stories? We all knew it was just a rip-off of Snapchat, but we liked you better so we went with it and it was so great! Stories are my favorite part of Instagram now. But, some changes we just can’t accept.
Here is my plea to you. Stop trying to be something you’re not! We love you for who you are and for how far you’ve come. You’ve grown from a square picture app and a website to connect college students. Now, look at you! But you’ve lost your way, friend.
It’s okay for other social media platforms to exist and excel at things that you don’t. You’re great just the way you are! We need a place where we can update our families on our lives and share ideas with one another in an easy-to-navigate forum. We also need places where we can share our lives in a visual way and follow the people that we want to keep up with and learn from. Those things are so valuable! If you stop doing it, then what?
Not to mention, I’m sorry to break it to you, but I don’t need three apps that all do the same thing. If I’m being candid with you, when it comes to the reels, TikTok wins all day every day, and twice on Sunday. By trying to steal the other platforms’ thunder, you’re really just undermining your own importance and making yourself irrelevant (the very thing you’re trying so hard not to become).
Instead of spending all your time trying to figure out why people like all the other apps so much, spend that time trying to figure out why people like you so much. Then you can take that knowledge and build on it. Hone your skills and be the best version of yourself instead of being the off-brand version of someone else.
All of this comes from a place of love as someone who enjoys the things you do and doesn’t want to see them taken away. Just to prove it to you, according to my Apple Screen Time, Meta is my number one social media company with an average of 2 hours spent on both Facebook and Instagram daily. Now, I’m not sure that I’m really proud of that statistic, but it proves my point. People love you! You do you boo and let the rest do what they do!
Love,
An Old Friend
