<h2 class=" eplus-wrapper">What's happening?</h2>

The year is 2004 Millie Bobby Brown was born and so was Facebook. Eighteen years later, are we about to see the death of social media? One author thinks so and he is happy about it. "The age of social media is ending. It never should have begun," writes Ian Bogost in The Atlantic.

Social media didn't start with Facebook. Before that came Friendster, Myspace, Friends Reunited and a number of others long since forgotten. These days Facebook is mostly seen as a site for older people.

Facebook started life in Harvard as a place to see who was in your class and their friends. It is now the third most visited website worldwide but people are worried about privacy and fake news. The United States government's former head of technology even said that "Facebook destroyed democracy" after the 2016 presidential elections.

<h2 class=" eplus-wrapper">Find out more</h2>

This has led to less people using social media use. Meta has lost $700bn and Twitter and TikTok are also facing difficulties. Twitter has seen many users leave since Elon Musk bought the company and TikTok expects to make less money this year than it hoped.

Some users also feel that social media leads to mental health problems and it is addictive.  Marc Faddoul, from Tracking Exposed, said that TikTok "can have a serious impact on your mental health".

Despite losing money Facebook still has billions of users and TikTok is still making a lot of money so it may be that these sites can keep going for a lot longer.

Yes! Most young people have already moved away from Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. If these platforms disappeared then very few people would notice the difference anyway and those who did would see an improvement in their mental health.

No! Social media is how people now find out about what is happening in the world. It has democratised the news and allows us to keep in contact with friends and relatives.