LLMs Are Not Like Social Media
LLMs differ from social media in psychological influence: social media is broadcast and performative, amplifying feelings about others, while LLMs are private 1:1 interactions that amplify feelings about ourselves and represent a new class of relationship and layer of cognition.
LLMs are different from social media when it comes to psychological influence.
When I talk about the ambient pressure LLMs (via different AI systems) exert on us, I often hear: “it’s like social media.” Maybe, at the level of net effect, that will turn out to be true (we don’t know yet). But we have good reasons to think that qualitatively the effect will be different.
Social media is fundamentally broadcast. The mental model is performative: “I speak to an audience”, “I manage impressions about myself”, and so on. Even this post is performative - I’m sharing my thoughts to elicit a specific effect: to find like-minded people.
LLMs are different: interaction is private. It feels less like a stage and more like a 1:1 interaction, often with qualities resembling a relationship with a coach or a (business) partner. There are no mainstream trends and no single “LLM effect”, but millions of microclimates shaped by prompts, product design, and the user’s own vulnerabilities.
This implies that the psychological effects will also be different. Instead of amplifying how we feel about other humans (social media), LLMs will amplify how we feel about ourselves. Instead of cognitive overload (social media), LLMs create the opportunity to delegate cognitive effort. Self-worth shifts from “I’m worthless because everybody is better/smarter/richer than me” to “I’m only worth something if my AI is available.”
It’s tempting to treat LLMs as just “the next app”. Psychologically, they are closer to a new class of relationship and a new layer of cognition.
If we keep talking about them with the old social media vocabulary, we’ll miss the real shifts.