Users around the world still spend hours on social media, scrolling feeds, watching short videos, and messaging, yet they increasingly share less about themselves. The phenomenon now has a name — Posting Zero — and Kursiv Lifestyle explains its causes, according to infohub.kz.
The term Posting Zero was coined by American journalist and columnist Kyle Chayka in 2025. He drew attention to users who remain active on social media but have all but stopped posting personal content on their public profiles.
This is not about quitting social media entirely. A person may watch videos daily, react to posts, send memes to friends, and chat, yet go months without publishing anything on their own page.
One reason cited is the changing format of social media itself. Today, a single feed mixes photos from friends, videos from bloggers, news, ads, and content tailored by algorithms to user interests. Against that backdrop, an ordinary photo from daily life may seem too uninteresting for a standalone post.
Moreover, a public post requires more effort. You have to choose a photo, edit it, come up with a caption, and then wait for followers' reactions. A personal post also leaves a digital footprint and is visible to a far wider audience than a message in a private chat.
Users note that social media has turned into a "pressure platform," where the feed is overloaded with perfect images, others' standards of success, and advertising. Many are tired of proving something to someone. People admit that giving up personal pages frees up an enormous amount of time and energy that used to go into thinking about content. Instead, they prefer real life, such as walks in the park.
"This is me! Living an interesting life in another country, achieving what many dream of, going through fire, water, and copper pipes — my story could make a great blog, even a useful one, could sell guides. I have so much experience, maybe start sharing? But I haven't run my Insta for a couple of years. I'm just not interested in proving or showing anything to anyone. But most of my acquaintances live on Insta and in this made-up world, they diligently create a beautiful picture," users write.
"Yes, social media used to feel like it was for your own circle, but now there's no interest in maintaining your own. There's so much content that it has undergone inflation. Instagram was a feed of friends and people you found interesting. You could see who posted what in chronological order. Now there are tons of posts, and it's completely unclear who they're from in the feed," one discussion notes.
"Social media hasn't been social for a long time. They don't provide long-term social connections. Instead, it's a gallop through a huge volume of supposedly contact, but in reality — brief touches," users write under a discussion on Threads.
Earlier, Kursiv LifeStyle wrote that a trend is gaining popularity on Threads in which users use ChatGPT to see how the neural network perceives them. Kazakhstanis have already started posting their versions and comparing how accurately GPT could describe them.