How Social Media Changed the Way We Think

I have always been an early adopter of technologies that connect people.

Long before social media became a global industry, I spent hours on mIRC, where for the first time the internet felt like a place where you could actually meet people. Then came Hi5, Flickr and its photography community, and later Facebook. Each platform expanded that sense of connection a little further.

During those years I spent time in South Africa with exchange friends from all over the world, and later traveled across South America as a backpacker, or a poor tourist depending on how you want to see it. I had met people in many different places, and suddenly these platforms made it possible to keep those connections alive. Being able to talk with friends in other countries, see their photos, or simply know what they were doing felt incredible.

I have always been somewhat introverted, and online conversations often flowed more naturally.

In 2015 I also experienced something that showed the amplifying power of social media. A friend of mine, designer Angelo Trofa, published a conceptual football jersey inspired by the Wiphala for the Bolivian national team. I appeared in one of the images wearing a jersey with “L. Canedo” and the number 7 on the back. The design went viral, appeared in several newspapers across the country, and sparked a national debate about identity and symbols. It was the first time I experienced how something that starts on social media can quickly escalate into a news story.

A year later, in 2016, that same curiosity turned into my own experiments. I launched Fútbol and Football, an online football store that became the first digital shop of its kind in Bolivia. It started as a personal experiment, but quickly gathered close to 30,000 followers on social media and began generating meaningful sales.

Years later I launched Bolivian Upload, a platform created to support entrepreneurship in Bolivia and give visibility to local projects. In its first year it gathered around 25,000 followers.

These experiences left me with a clear impression. Social media had the ability to build communities around shared interests.

Looking back, it is interesting to think about the moment when all of this began to scale.

In 2006, when Facebook opened to the general public and Twitter began expanding globally, social media stopped being relatively small communities and began turning into cultural infrastructure.

What had started as spaces for connection gradually began to reshape the architecture of public life.

Twenty years later it is difficult to imagine the world without them. Everyday communication, commerce, politics and culture have all been shaped by their logic.

In the early days, navigating the internet required intention. You had to enter, search and read. Text structured the experience, and conversations moved at a slower pace.

As social media expanded, the experience changed. Flow replaced search. Constant updates replaced deliberate exploration. Content began to organize itself around retention.

Gradually, format began to shape attention.

Video gained ground over text. Later, short video became the dominant format. Interaction simplified. A gesture, an immediate reaction, a quick comment. Design increasingly minimized friction.

When an environment privileges short and continuous stimuli, the mind adapts. Attention trains itself for fragments. Sustaining a complex idea for several minutes begins to feel demanding.

At the same time, a new economic model emerged. Digital advertising moved from being complementary to becoming central. Personal data gained strategic value, and entire industries formed around visibility and influence.

From the perspective of someone working in digital transformation, the change is evident. Purchase decisions now happen within the feed. Reputation is built, or eroded, in real time.

The cultural landscape also shifted. Ideas and trends cross borders with unprecedented speed. At the same time, algorithmic personalization fragments experience to the point of creating parallel realities.

The most profound transformation, however, is less visible.

It has to do with the internal rhythm of thought.

Constant exposure to short stimuli alters how we process information. Conversation accelerates. Silence becomes uncomfortable. Presence divides itself across multiple layers of attention.

For two decades platforms have refined their ability to capture and sustain attention.

Now a different phase is beginning. Systems no longer only organize content. They increasingly anticipate behavior. With the expansion of generative artificial intelligence, the digital experience adapts in real time to each individual.

Personalization reaches a new level of sophistication.

If the last twenty years were dedicated to optimizing attention, the next ones will likely focus on optimizing perception.

In that context, the central question is cognitive.

It has to do with our ability to continue thinking for ourselves inside systems designed to anticipate what we think.