In the Next Era of Social, Build Rituals, Not Habits

⚠️ Time to BeReal. ⚠️ By now you’ve seen—and more likely heard—this notification go off at a random time each day. You take a two-minute break to snap a photo—maybe a few times to get a nice one—and share it with your friends. BeReal’s novel mechanic is representative of an emerging era of social media that stands apart from the legacy social media giants we all know. 

Big social—my moniker for the collective of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube—is emblematic of what I call habitual social. Habitual social apps depend on having a large daily user base, usually measured as daily active users, or DAUs. The more time each user spends, the happier the platform.

Habitual social apps thrive off of your bad habits—things that you’ve become wired to do. The notorious “doomscrolling” means consuming until you run out of content, you’re interrupted, or you’re painfully aware of the time sink. This is increasingly my experience using Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok, and, in a past era, Instagram and Facebook.

Some things feel different, though—taking a few moments out of my day to play Wordle or post to BeReal. I do these consciously and attentively, as daily rituals, and I’m optimistic that social products can foster rituals, not just habits. Ritual social apps aim to create regular, purposeful moments, even if small ones; they’re at their best as a mindful microdose of meaning and feel-good.

In consumer social, rituals have been likened to just a feature, a mechanic, or a new entry strategy. They haven’t been celebrated as the main thing. But I see huge potential for rituals to be a core element of social products. In fact, I believe the next era of social will be defined by products that create rituals rather than habits.

Habit vs. routine vs. ritual

Habits are things we do that get so ingrained that they become automatic. They come with familiar urges to do something, usually triggered by a cue. We might have the urge to check our phone for messages, emails, and likes as soon as we wake up each morning (or when we get a notification). 

We can develop habits around work, play, or patterns of thinking. They can give us highs (the dopamine hits), reinforcing habits and even pushing to addiction. Not all habits are bad, but the bad ones are hard to stop because they’re so ingrained.