Social network fragmentation is real
The exhaustion with algorithmic performance and the retreat into smaller, more intentional spaces defines the zeitgeist of 2026.
A brief editorial note: This whole Substack writing project started back on January 29, 2021. Five years of missives are now in the books. For those of you who have been along for the journey, thank you. My cadence for this Substack is probably going to move to bi-weekly or monthly so don’t panic if your Friday routine and mine are a little different going forward.
Thank you for tuning in to week 223 of the Lindahl Letter publication. A new edition arrives every Friday. This week the topic under consideration for the Lindahl Letter is, “Social network fragmentation is real.”
All of the old internet is falling apart. We don’t really have a place where people gather in the aggregate any more. Big events like the college football championship game and the super bowl gain a ton of attention. The big game Monday night was on ESPN which is a cable network with a strong streaming presence. That cultural touchstone probably brought together a community of 20 million people or more for a few hours. Most of the events that bring people together are passing. Robert Putnam wrote a book called Bowling Alone and published it back in 2000 [1]. That treatise on the American community really questioned the fall of civic and social clubs. Perhaps the better question is what exactly are people doing with their time instead of coming together within that civic context. It would be very easy to just queue up some deep research tasks to figure out what people replaced civic and social clubs with and if it even matters. Right now I have Gemini working on that in the background. I remember reading Bowling Alone and then wanting to know more about possible solutions. Maybe the breakdown in social networks and the promise they had for connection is the next chapter in the story.
None of the suggestions from Gemini were very interesting and that deep research was really just a wash; it was not very good reading in the end. Most of those deep research results are maybe informative, but otherwise devoid of wisdom and meaningful dialogue. As we enter 2026, the social landscape is moving toward what might be considered a more community-first era defined by a retreat from mass broadcast platforms into the digital world of the smaller, niche enclaves like WhatsApp Communities, Discord, and Substack that prioritize unfiltered, human-curated dialogue over algorithmic performance. This shift coincides with a broader digital reckoning in which overall social media use is contracting, particularly among the youngest and oldest Americans, while the public sphere that remains becomes increasingly polarized and darn right hard to even read these days due to the disproportionate activity of highly partisan users. It is like everybody in the middle got crowded out and people are just throwing things around.
A lot of research about thick and thin social capital exists. Thin social capital describes the transactional and casual connections that exist. Thicker social capital involves deeper multi-layered relationships that are typically longer lasting and would be described as less passing in nature. Social media for example is a very passing type of connection. Some of it is really very thought provoking. Instead of leaning into that segment of academic research I’m going to focus on some of the practical on the ground things that are happening. To counteract the isolation of these digital spaces, there is a growing return to physical, “in-real-life” (IRL) engagement, with brands and organizers hosting run clubs and interest-based meetups to foster authentic human connection that leads to thick social capital. However, while these private enclaves successfully build social capital, the sociological glue connecting like-minded people may ultimately reinforce social silos rather than creating the capital required to unify a diverse society.
I gave Threads the social network built by Meta a chance when it started out, then migrated over to Bluesky. Over the last year, I even tried the notes functions in Substack. Recently, I signed up for a Mastodon server setup by the folks who produce Hard Fork, the very popular podcast from the New York Times. None of these social networks really feels like the world showed up in real-time. That was the part of the old Twitter I missed the most. It was so timely and immediate. Things happened and people opined. I know that a community is built from place, interest, and circumstance. None of these triangulations of community helped describe how social media changes dynamics. The directionality of the connection is very asymmetrical within most social media or online connections. That is probably in the end what Putnam described, but it does not really describe what is next. That is the phase of community that will become defining within the next era of civil discourse, civility, and broader social fabric.
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Footnotes:
[1] Putnam, R. D. (2000). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. Simon & Schuster.