By Mohamed Chebaro
Have you ever lost hours of time gazing absent-mindedly into your screen, starting with a meaningless link sent by a trusted friend as a joke, only to fall into an endless pit of aimless browsing, one platform after another?
As someone with an aversion to social media in general, I have never been an active user or consumer of it but even I do still get lured in sometimes, one way or another. I am increasingly not alone in my aversion, it seems, as growing numbers of people in the UK appear to be becoming less active on social media platforms.
Recent research by Ofcom, Britain’s communications watchdog, suggests that 49 percent of adult social media users actively posted, shared or commented on social media last year, compared with more than 61 percent in 2024. The organization’s annual survey of media use and attitudes, published last week, found a key reason for the decline was fear that old posts might come back to haunt users.
Ironically, the report also found that the amount of time the average user spent online each day on personal devices in 2025 was 4 hours and 30 minutes, an increase of 10 minutes compared with 2024. This is a clear sign that we are all still glued to our screens, engaged in addictive scrolling and checking, often in a voyeuristic manner.
This is despite growing concerns, not only in Britain but worldwide, about the effects of social media on health, and researchers note that people are now also increasingly embracing the use of artificial intelligence tools. We might, it seems, be moving out of the frying pan and into the fire.
As is the case in the UK, the use of AI tools such as ChatGPT is on the rise worldwide. In Britain, surveys have found that more than half of adults used AI tools, and the figure rises to more than 80 percent among 16-24-year-olds.
The cause for alarm is that many younger people — 20 percent of 25-to-34-year-olds — appear to be turning to AI for companionship. While older age groups seem to be reducing social media use as a result of mental health concerns or fear of excessive engagement, their younger counterparts are embracing new tools that are no less harmful, potentially.
Online shaming, according to the Ofcom report, is one reason for the recent decline in active social media use among adults from all walks of life. In a world of cancel culture and increasing polarization, old posts can resurface and prove contentious, as for many years we put our private lives and most personal thoughts on display for all to see on social media sites. All those posts were gathered and stored by the tech giants, ultimately used as data to help train AI models without our consent.
As AI tools continue to develop, the human appetite for them is on the increase. Some experts warn that human cognition and knowledge could fall victim to an over reliance on generative AI.
Despite much research on the issue, the jury is still out; some people believe the use of AI expands our knowledge greatly, others fear a growing reliance on the technology will lead to learning deficiencies and a reduction of our critical thinking abilities across the board.
Sooner or later, the world will have to face the question of whether faster and better scientific progress, and more informed decision-making aided by the vast crunching of data, is a complement to or substitute for human learning and well-being.
It is certainly evidently true that AI is already playing a critical role in, for example, helping scientists to develop new medicines, improving decision making by aiding in the aggregation of data, and speeding up logistics.
More worryingly, though, the use of AI is changing the very nature of modern warfare by, for example, sifting through colossal intelligence databases. Other studies have warned that AI could negatively affect human learning and capabilities.
From helping to compose simple emails, carry out conversations between colleagues and write critical essays or industrial reports, to providing virtual companionship, the use of AI is increasingly prolific. Its many, wide-ranging applications provide us with speedy assistance, but there is evidence that it might be affecting the ability of users to memorize facts and accurately retain and develop their own thoughts and arguments, raising fears about the erosion of individual creativity and agency.
Among some younger users in particular, an over-reliance on ChatGPT and similar tools can affect opinions and beliefs, and sometimes tacitly alter them.
Many people are even having conversations with these new, powerful machines, to their detriment. Research has revealed that AI chatbots are designed to agree with us, and over time this can make even an otherwise perfectly rational person believe things that are simply not true by reinforcing false beliefs.
This “delusional spiraling” is apparently a result of the type of validation model on which chatbots are trained. As a result, the machine will often spit out something it believes will earn a thumbs up from the user rather than prioritizing truth or accuracy, ultimately leading it to increasingly agree with whatever views it is presented with.
Since the emergence of AI, people have increasingly been grappling with concerns about the ways in which it is likely to replace jobs and render humans unemployed. Yet the problem that we should be addressing is whether or not, and how, AI tools are altering the ways in which people think, and digest the data and information churned out by machines.
Right now, many of us are left with limited choices in an increasingly digital world, forcing each of us to navigate it in our own ways, but regardless of our choices the conclusion is the same: All of these digital products have been monopolizing our attention, monetizing it, and then leaving us at rather a disadvantage.
Social media is now firmly embedded in our lives, with nine out of 10 of us using it in some way. I am not sure, then, whether turning it off completely would be completely good for me or you, and so the challenge of finding a healthy middle ground is perhaps the way forward.
Regardless of how we quantify and qualify society’s use of social media, which might rise or fall according to shifting attitudes, digital literacy or personal concerns, it is worrying to observe that while social media use might be in decline, the adoption of AI tools is increasing at a rate that could in time reveal that we jumped out of the frying pan and directly into the fire.
