Digital detox: Is social media still worth it for museums?

What next after the mass X-odus? It’s been almost four years since Elon Musk infamously carried a sink into the headquarters of the social media giant formerly known as Twitter, promising to “free the bird”.

The free-speech warrior undoubtedly succeeded in liberating the site of many of its former users. They started leaving soon after that viral takeover moment in October 2022 and abandoned the site in droves following the re-election of Donald Trump as US president two years later, in which the newly rebranded X played a key role.

Among those dispersed users was the micro-community of professionals and institutions once affectionately known as #MuseumTwitter. Although there are, of course, plenty of museum-related accounts still on X, many in that community have now stopped posting. Not only did they object to Musk’s politics, but they also found that algorithmic changes to the site were resulting in far less engagement and increasingly hostile interactions.

The culture secretary Lisa Nandy and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport became the latest to leave X in July, saying the platform favours abuse and misinformation over meaningful debate.

The changes on X are part of a growing backlash against social media in general. Responding to concerns about mental health and exposure to online harms , the UK Government plans to introduce a ban on certain platforms for under-16s in spring next year.

So how is the museum sector operating in this vastly changed online landscape?

Mike Ellis, director of digital agency Thirty8 Digital and founder of The Museum Platform, is sceptical about whether the benefits ever truly existed for museums. He now believes the focus on social media took resources away from other, more fruitful, ways of engaging with the public.

“Honestly, I don’t think there is a significantly useful reason for museums to do [social media] nowadays,” he says.

“Having spent years looking at ‘engagement’ through social media, my opinion – with the massive caveat of being an old git who doesn’t do this stuff himself – is that museums should spend less time worrying about social media and more time worrying about their ‘real’ content – website and newsletter.

“I worry that the balance has over-shifted to social, and that the other stuff is being neglected. And, in my humble opinion, you get more bang for buck sending a rocking newsletter with a much higher ‘actual engagement rate’ than you do with a like or a vote on whatever social media site of choice.”

It’s an about-turn from Ellis’s former outlook on social media.

“We used to be massive fans and, in fact, I spent a lot of time evangelising about how it could transform museums’ dialogue with their public,” he says.

But he changed his mind when he found his Twitter presence becoming a “personal burden”.

No good comes of it

“I think we are getting to the stage now where there is broad consensus that – being blunt – social media just isn’t very good for the world,” says Ellis. “Kids are pretty messed up, adults are distracted and opinions are divided and polarised. Much of this can be put squarely at the feet of social media platforms.”

It’s beyond doubt that social media has plenty of negative impacts, but many people in the sector continue to see it as a force for good; when used in the right way, they feel it remains a powerful tool for engaging with a vast range of audiences and communities that might otherwise be beyond the reach of a museum.

No institution knows this more than Reading’s Museum of English Rural Life (Merl), which built up a huge online following on the back of its mega-viral “look at this absolute unit” tweet back in 2018, written by the museum’s then-digital lead Adam Koszary.

Ironically, the museum is one of those to have stepped away from the platform that made it a social media star.

Merl’s marketing manager, Joe Vaughan, says: “Like for many sectors, X as Twitter was a mainstay of galleries, libraries, archives and museums’ social media. It let us connect our stories to pop culture, news and trends, and to create relevance at scale.

“Yet as Twitter became X, its policies became incompatible with our values.”

After no true competitor to the site emerged, #MuseumTwitter became “dispersed and fragmented across a strange new internet”, says Vaughan.

“There’s a feeling of incompleteness, like arriving at a party after many guests have left,” he adds.

Bluesky thinking

With that said, there’s still a lot of engagement to be had on the new channels, according to Vaughan.

“At the Merl, we’re seeing huge results on Bluesky, and it’s filling a significant part of the function that Twitter gave us,” he says.

“We count many familiar faces from Twitter among our Bluesky audience and have gained a huge number of new followers. So don’t give up on these channels, even if they don’t – and can’t – compete with Twitter at its peak.”

Vaughan remains a firm believer in the power of social media.

“I think we should see social media as a free and ephemeral display space,” he says. “It’s a platform for engaging a global audience, unrestricted by geography or even by time. In our case, we’re a small museum in the University of Reading that can reach hundreds of thousands of people a day through our content strategy.

“One of our biggest challenges, as a sector, is to stop viewing social media with suspicion. It’s too easy to see it as a threat to our physical spaces, when we could instead embrace the opportunity and capitalise on how well it complements our galleries and our expertise as storytellers.”

How museums use those platforms is changing, however.

“Museums have made huge strides across video formats, including longer YouTube videos and short-form content on TikTok and Instagram reels,” says Vaughan.

“And the ceiling for social video feels so much higher than X. For example, our award-winning ‘absolute unit’ tweet peaked at 100,000 likes. In contrast, one video by the Royal Armouries has surpassed nine million.

“Yet when it comes to the art of making good content, the underlying skills remain the same. It’s about revealing collections in ways that move and surprise us – whether prompting curiosity, fascination, laughter or many more emotions.”

Human touch

Another change is the rise of AI-driven social media content – or “slop” as it’s often called. As this proliferates, Vaughan sees an opportunity for museums to further distinguish themselves in the online space.

“Human-made content has never been more valuable,” he says. “I think we’ll see more and more content positioning itself as being by people, about people, with people. There is an absolutely colossal opportunity for museums to be leaders here, as trusted organisations full of authentic, unique and very human creativity.”

In spite of the public backlash against social media, Vaughan thinks the analogue and digital worlds shouldn’t be posited in competition with each other, particularly in museums.

“Rather than a conflict, I think it’s an amazing strength of museums that we can excel in both categories,” he says.

“We can be analogue spaces of reflection and meditation, and we can be savvy creators reaching global audiences.

“It’s too easy to get preoccupied by the tensions between these positions – we get wrapped up in the conflict and don’t make progress in either space, and leave the world to overtake us.

“As the media and technology landscape evolves, museums have so much room to grow. We just have to see these as opportunities – not threats – and embrace the challenge.”

Why the Story Museum is an ex-Tweeter

Since stepping away from X a couple of years ago, the Story Museum in Oxford has changed tack when it comes to social media.

Conrad Bodman, the museum’s chief executive, says: “We’re a family venue, so it’s really adults bringing their children along. Our main audience is under-11s and their young parents, who are obviously complete digital natives.

“They are finding out their information about activities mainly on Instagram and TikTok. We obviously get lots of grandparents bringing children, so Facebook is relevant as well.”

This has led the museum to focus its efforts on making short-form video content individually tailored to each of those platforms, which Bodman says gets much more engagement than still images.

Although staff produce much of this content in-house – and have upskilled to the point where they all feel comfortable in front of a camera – the museum has also developed new relationships with social media influencers.

“We’ve developed a collaborator contract, and we’re looking for influencers in the family space, both in Oxfordshire and in London,” says Bodman.

“We tend to use influencers that have got 100,000-plus followers, but some of them are into the 500,000-plus space. So that’s providing massive new networks for us.”

The museum’s social media strategy is about pushing its unique offer as an analogue space – there are few screens or digital interactives in its galleries.

“We’ve always been a venue that has focused on human interaction – we’re centring the real-life, analogue experience,” says Bodman.

“There is a lot of contemporary culture with a focus on digital detox, and that is part of the world we lean into.”

The museum hasn’t seen any noticeable impacts from leaving X, according to Bodman.

“It was not a platform that was delivering huge audiences to us,” he says.