Social media in the news in 2023: Twitter becomes X, Meta launches Threads, teens’ mental health is in focus, and AI is on the rise
- Elon Musk came under fire from LGBTQ groups and others for allowing discriminatory behaviour on his platform X, formerly Twitter
- Mark Zuckerberg started Threads to compete with X. Meanwhile, his Facebook and Instagram sites were sued for addicting minors
We lost Twitter and got X. We tried out Bluesky and Mastodon (well, some of us did). We fretted about AI bots and teenage mental health. We cocooned in private chats and scrolled endlessly as we did in years past. For social media users, 2023 was a year of beginnings and endings, with some soul-searching in between.
Here’s a look back at some of the biggest stories in social media in 2023 – and what to watch for in 2024.
Goodbye Twitter
A little more than a year ago, Elon Musk walked into Twitter ’s San Francisco headquarters, fired its chief executive and other top executives and began transforming the social media platform into what’s now known as X.
Musk revealed the X logo in July. It quickly replaced Twitter’s name and its whimsical blue bird icon, online and on the company’s San Francisco headquarters.
“And soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds,” Musk posted on the site.
Because of its public nature and because it attracted public figures, journalists and other high-profile users, Twitter always had an outsize influence on popular culture – but that influence seems to be waning.
