The UX of Social Media in 2024

Professions, politics, and pop culture.

Social media reflects and affects us in where we work, who we vote for, what we purchase, and how we spend our free time.

Since we last examined the social media space in 2018, social media has deviated from its original photo-sharing roots to incorporate short-form video, AI, gaming, dating, and shopping, begging the question – is social media still social?

We explored this question and the user experience of social media apps in our latest benchmarking survey.

We used MUiQ to benchmark the desktop website and app experience of six popular platforms:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Snapchat
• TikTok
• X (formerly known as Twitter)

Participants in the studies answered the eight-item SUPR-Q (including the Net Promoter Score) and questions about their prior experience. In particular, we were interested in exploring the quality of the user experience, users' reasoning behind social media use, the proliferation of AI, levels of trust, and social media’s impact on mood and self-esteem.

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Summary and Discussion

We recruited 324 participants in August 2024 to reflect on their most recent experience with one of the platforms they had used in the past year. While the sample size isn’t large relative to the billions (with a b!) of people who use social media, it’s large enough to detect patterns between platforms and to compare to our historical sample.

We asked respondents to select which activities they engage in while using the platform. A selection of activities is shown in Table 1 .

While participants still report using social media to stay informed about people in their lives (49%) or keep up with friends (46%), platforms seem to be moving more toward impersonal content consumption. As shown in Table 1, across all platforms a substantial 48% of respondents reported watching short-form videos. This aligns with findings that users are primarily using social media for entertainment (60%) and distraction (44%).

There is, however, variation between apps. Facebook and Snapchat are still firmly planted in the “social” aspect of social media, with 79% of Facebook users and 78% of Snapchatters stating they use it for keeping in touch with friends.

Our analysis of the user experience of six social media websites found:

• 1. Social media remains social, but the introduction of short-form video is transforming the platforms into an avenue for escapism and content consumption.
• 2. TikTok dominated the UX metrics we collected, significantly outperforming other apps on usability, preferred content, and mental health impact.
• 3. X scored the lowest across most measures, with the worst user experience, less preferable content, and more deleterious effects on mood.
• 4. AI and deepfakes have begun permeating UX content, though average users do not yet engage in much AI content creation.
• 5. With or without parental consent, users believe teenagers are the youngest demographic group that should be allowed to access social media.
• 6. Contrary to popular opinion, people reported that social media tends to have a modest positive effect on their mood and self-esteem for most apps, especially TikTok. X is the exception, tending to worsen mood, which may be due to the nature of its content.

For more details, see the downloadable report .

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UXPA Salary Survey

Last chance to take the UXPA Salary Survey hosted by MeasuringU!

We'd appreciate it if you could take a moment to participate in our anonymous survey for UX professionals: UXPA Salary Survey

The data you provide helps us maintain the MeasuringU Salary Calculator, a resource we've developed over the last decade to offer salary estimates by weighing various factors and their effects on compensation.

In addition to the calculator we’ll also summarize other industry trends including changes in method usage, and how organizations and people have been affected and adapted to the last two tumultuous years in tech.

Thank you for your participation!

?Benchmarking in MUiQ

The MeasuringU Intelligent Questioning Platform (MUiQ ) is an unmoderated UX testing platform geared towards benchmarking the user experience. It has built-in templates that make it easy to set up complex, competitive benchmarks and an analysis dashboard that compares standardized metrics across each condition so your team can quickly gather insights from the research.

MUiQ supports the following study types:

• Competitive Benchmarking
• Think-Aloud Usability Testing
• IA Navigation (Card Sort, Click Test, Tree Test)
• Large Scale Surveys
• Advanced Surveys (Kano, Top Tasks, MaxDiff)
• Prototype Testing

With the results being presented in an easy to understand analysis dashboard, MUiQ provides all of the tools you need to collect meaningful UX insights.

Reach out today to learn more about MUiQ .

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