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The new social media: Group Chats

Curious about the future of social media?

You might not find it on today’s biggest platforms like TikTok, X, or Instagram. Instead, look to your group chats.

As trust in big platforms declines, people are turning to smaller, more intimate online spaces. Group chats, private servers, and close-friend circles are quietly reclaiming what social media once promised: real connection with people you know, space to be yourself, and conversation over performance.

It’s a shift from broadcast to bonding—and it might just be where the next chapter of the internet begins.

// Group chats: Today’s private internet

We live in the age of the group chat. Consider WhatsApp as an example.

• Between 2012 and 2023, WhatsApp gained 2.5 billion monthly active users (or 30% of the global population). Today, the most popular messaging app in the world has over 3 billion monthly active users, and is growing at about 8% per year.
• One study found that fewer than 2% of WhatsApp users use the app exclusively for one-on-one messaging. “The group chat feature is used frequently by nearly every WhatsApp user,” the study concluded. The app is more of a group chat messaging app than a one-to-one messaging app.
• WhatsApp is dominant in places like India and Brazil, with WeChat as the messaging app of choice in China (it has grown from 50 million users in 2012 to over 1.4 billion today).
• The end-to-end encrypted Signal messaging app has been gaining traction and users from WhatsApp, as well. It has 70 million monthly active users. Meanwhile, iMessage has over 1 billion monthly active users.

The content shared in private one-on-one or group messages is considered “dark social” content. Unlike the “dark web,” dark social content is considered “dark” because it is out of sight on public platforms and difficult to track. According to analysts, 95% of all content shared online is dark social content. What we see on feeds on social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, or X accounts for only 5%.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also recognizes it. “The future is private,” he said in April.

// The human-sized internet

In a digital ecosystem where unlimited content and engagement-optimizing algorithms dominate, the privacy, exclusivity, and intimacy of group chats are modern luxuries. 

Today, algorithms that optimize for engagement and revenue have elevated ads and displaced people. People are less inclined to broadcast a polished image to everyone and more inclined to share an unfiltered photo of their lives with their close friends. 

A contributor to Reddit remarked that the group chat “feels like back in the earlier days of the internet and the way it should be.” One person commented, “We need the connection, we don't need the platforms.” Max Read, a writer for New York Magazine, described group chats as “the new Facebook…pocket sources of interpersonal nourishment.”

Group chats, as a form of human-scale, private social media, have distinct advantages over public platforms.

• Authentic connection: Research shows people feel closer and more supported when they spend time in group chats with friends and family, thanks to candid, pressure-free interactions that boost emotional well-being. A 2023 study of WeChat group chats found that group chats increased trust among people; that trust, in turn, fostered a stronger emotional attachment to the community, and this combined effect made people more likely to engage in behaviors that benefited the community as a whole.
• Human-sized networks: Anthropologist Robin Dunbar estimates humans can effectively manage around 150 stable relationships. Group chats keep us within that natural limit, avoiding the cognitive overload of thousands of “friends.”
• Multidimensional identity: Sociological theories like social penetration explain how people share more deeply in intimate circles. Group chats let us present different sides of ourselves—parent, activist, friend—without the pressure to maintain a single public persona.
• Organic moderation: In private chats, social norms—not algorithms—govern behavior. Because participants know each other, individuals tend to moderate their own conduct, often reducing the negativity that arises from the anonymity of public forums.

// The group chat is blowing up

And yet, group chats are not without their problems and challenges.

• Privacy: Messaging apps like WhatsApp and Signal promise greater privacy and end-to-end encryption, but privacy is not guaranteed, and the content of “private” group chats can find its way into the public domain. After all, a group chat is only as private as the people who are in it. Consider “SignalGate,” the March 2025 leak of top-secret communication by U.S. military personnel when National Security Advisor Mike Waltz accidentally added Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, to the group chat. An article in WIRED highlighted how SignalGate has sparked a reconsideration of the privacy of group chats.
• Safety: The dangers that start on public social media platforms can be amplified in private messages. A recent article in The Wall Street Journal chronicled “sextortion” schemes through Apple’s iMessages. iMessages have become a way for online predators to build trust and extort young users by threatening to share AI-generated deepfake nude photos.
• Misinformation: It’s far harder to moderate content and identify misinformation in dark social channels like group chats. Misinformation can thrive and spread. Dr. Inga Trauthig, head of research at the Propaganda Research Lab at the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas, pointed out that the downside of group chat privacy is the inability to monitor content and prevent the spread of harmful or false information.

// The People’s Internet, at a human scale

This shift toward human-sized group chats reflects something timeless in us—the need for real connection with people we know, conversations where we can be ourselves, and a sense of control over our digital lives. It’s not a trend; it’s human nature.

But against the backdrop of a social media ecosystem defined by algorithms, surveillance, and ads, group chats are a breath of fresh air and a return to a simpler internet.

They represent a small example of “the people’s internet,” a vision that Project Liberty holds to build solutions where everyone has a voice, choice, and stake in a better internet.

Project Liberty updates

// Project Liberty Institute CEO Sheila Warren to speak at UN

PLI CEO Sheila Warren will be speaking at the UN Open Source Week's Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) Day on June 19th at 10:30 am ET. She will be on a panel titled Global Cooperation for DPI: Lessons from Cross-Border Projects. Livestream the panel here.

Other notable headlines

// 🧬 Anne Wojcicki, co-founder and former CEO of 23andMe, is taking back control of the company by buying ‘substantially all’ of 23andMe’s assets through a nonprofit, according to an article in The Verge. (Free).

// 🤖 We’re starting to give AI agents real autonomy, but we’re not prepared for what could happen next, according to an article in MIT Technology Review. (Paywall).

// 🤔 An article in the Wall Street Journal examined why superintelligent AI isn’t taking over anytime soon. Researchers argue fundamental flaws in reasoning models mean bots aren’t on the verge of exceeding human intelligence. (Paywall).

// 💬 Generative AI chatbots are going down conspiratorial rabbit holes and endorsing wild, mystical belief systems. For some people, conversations with AI can deeply distort reality, according to an article in the New York Times. (Paywall).

// 🏛 An article in 404 Media examined the FTC complaint led by the Consumer Federation of America that outlines how therapy bots on Meta and Character.AI have claimed to be qualified, licensed therapists to users. (Free)

// 🗣 After Peter Listro was diagnosed with blood cancer, his family decided to make a virtual avatar they can talk to after his death, according to an article in the New York Times. (Paywall).

Partner news & opportunities

// 2025 Digital Media & Developing Minds International Scientific Congress

July 13–16 | Washington, D.C.

Children and Screens is hosting a 4-day conference in Washington, D.C., convening researchers, clinicians, educators, and policymakers to explore the social, psychological, cognitive, behavioral, and physical impacts of digital media on children and adolescents. Register today.

// DRC Advocates Decentralized AI for Equity and Safety

The Decentralization Research Center has published a report calling for a shift from centralized AI governance toward blockchain-based solutions to ensure transparency, fair value distribution, and public oversight. Backed by new polling from Digital Currency Group revealing strong public support for decentralized AI, the report warns that without distributed models, economic and decision-making power will remain concentrated among a few stakeholders, risking inequality and opaque practices. Read more here.

// All Tech Is Human’s Responsible Tech Summer Reading List

All Tech Is Human has curated a summer reading list to inspire and engage those passionate about ethics and responsibility in technology. Featuring conversations with leading voices, the list highlights essential books that fuel the Responsible Tech movement and invites readers to dive deeper.

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// Project Liberty builds solutions that help people take back control of their lives in the digital age by reclaiming a voice, choice, and stake in a better internet.

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