You're not imagining it, we've all stopped posting on social media in 2024.

I just went on a holiday for the first time in a while, and as I lay on a sunbed in a beautiful location sipping a very aesthetic watermelon cocktail, I thought to myself... 2018 Gemma would have posted a photo of this on Instagram. 

Perhaps 2018 Gemma would have even posted a sweeping Instagram story of the drink and the view, carefully making sure my legs (obviously in full relax mode atop a pretty resort pool towel) made it into the bottom half of the shot. 

We were all doing it - posting 'room tours' like we were cosplaying as Influencers on a paid PR trip, and sharing pictures of every meal and drink and new location we ventured to. 

Watch Lauren Curtis explaining the 'fantasy' of social media in 2018. A reality that is well known in 2024.

But 2024 Gemma didn't post anything. It was a mixture of, I couldn't be bothered and it felt like a weird thing to do. In fact, I didn't post a whole heap on social media during my nine-day trip. A few stories at most, and one grid post once I was back home showing a few highlights from our holiday.

But even that was a lot by 2024's standards. 

Most of my friends have stopped posting regularly on social media. It's a trend I've noticed increasing more and more over the past year. On Facebook it's dropped off a cliff completely, but the move towards privacy is now filtering down to Instagram and TikTok. 

A large majority now only post when they've got an announcement they want to get out to the masses; 'I am pregnant,' 'I had a baby,' 'I am engaged,' 'We bought a house'. 

Perhaps the only exception that comes to mind is people's weddings, and fair play. Wedding photography is expensive, and it's not unusual for newlyweds to share multiple stories and posts and shoutouts after their special day. 

But holidays? Weekends? Dinners with friends? I don't know about you, but I am seeing less of my friend's daily lives online than I used to. 

It wasn't that long ago that a meal out with friends could look like this. Image: Getty.

This observation was solidified for me when I read an article on Mamamia by Lisa Hamilton talking about 'the baby trend sweeping your socials.' 

She explained that people are moving away from the cute stylised pregnant announcements on their socials, and instead they're just hard launching their babies.

"It has become kinda gauche to update followers on your comings and goings on social media. Never has there been a bigger spotlight on tracking the 'cringe' things people share on social media (thanks to accounts like The Beetoota Advocate). So to save face many just opt to avoid posting all together. Call it self-preservation in a digital world," wrote Hamilton. 

As I started to think about some of the pregnant women and new mums in my life, I realised she was right. Within seconds I could think of at least four women in my direct circles who had opted out of a pregnancy announcement and were choosing to just post when their child had safely arrived. 

When I asked on my Instagram whether people were posting more or less on their own pages it was a resounding "less." Not a single person said more and when I asked why, the answers were mixed.

"It's time consuming and takes you out of the moment," wrote one friend.

"We know now that Instagram is a highlight reel and people want to live more authentically," said another.

"Age I think, maturity and the awareness of why I was posting so much in the first place," said a third.

Reading between the lines, I think she means she posted more when she was younger, single and hoping to be 'seen' more, which is the one trend that does appear to have survived. I can still tell when my friends are suddenly single by their sudden influx of posting night's out and (casually) sexy selfies.

As for the age comment, even the younger people on my feeds post less. In fact, when they do post they tend to opt for the more casually weird; things like blurry photos of a drink in the sand, or an overexposed sunset photo where the people in it are mostly in shadow. The opposite to the perfectly curated and posed pictures from my early 20s life. 

It's curious to me that social media trends seem to be following in the footsteps of fashion, a kind of circular world where things that were once cool come back again a few seasons on slightly rearranged. 

Videos of people crying in cars and sharing raw emotion, has been replaced in its 2.0 version with haphazard almost 'accidental' photos of real-life moments. 

An actual screenshot from a photo within an Instagram carousel my (younger) best friend recently uploaded that made me feel both perplexed and old. Oh, how the times have changed. Image: Instagram.

Cost-of-living and the state of the world is no doubt partly responsible for our plummeting posting. 

Long gone are the days of influencers posting their PR freebie hauls. Even regular Joes posting flashier things in life like holidays and fancy meals feels jarring in a world where people are struggling to pay rent. 

Not to mention the death and horror we're seeing on our feeds. As social media has transformed into more of a news source than a sharing resource among friends, it doesn't just feel insensitive posting alongside such depravity - it feels pointless. Algorithms nowadays don't even surface our content to the friends and family we're hoping to reach.

Then there's the layer of parents feeling weird about what to do about posting their kids online; do we? Don't we? Do we sporadically with boundaries about what we share? It's a minefield that we're only just starting to understand the ramifications of. 

So here we are. In 2024 we've turned into a bunch of lurkers. Scrolling, but not posting. Thinking about posting... and then opting not too for any of the aforementioned reasons.

Perhaps we finally learnt our lesson, that living in the moment is far more fulfilling.

Or perhaps we're just bored with the current social offerings available. 

No doubt we'll all get sucked into 'the next big thing' when it lands in our laps. 

Feature image: Getty.