On my 57th rewatch of Sex and the City, my overarching thought is this: “I’m so jealous they’re living in a world without smartphones.”

While the benefits that technology affords us in 2024 are undeniable, I’m craving an era I barely remember—one where you called people’s homephones, made reservations by dropping by a restaurant, and where you made a plan to meet a friend at a specific corner, at a specific time. I miss the days of checking your route on the home computer before leaving home, and if you get lost, you just ask a friendly-looking stranger on the street (shock horror—a real human interaction).  I’m not sure to what extent the rosy retrospection effect is at play here, but it really does feel like smartphones and social media have made life more complicated.

I don’t even consider myself that bad when it comes to phone addiction, but it says a lot that I’m too anxious to open Screen Time and confront reality. When I’m feeling particularly introspective, I get worked up over the fact that we’ll probably never spend less time on our phones—in other words, things are only going to get worse. I listen to music in the shower, podcasts when I travel, and almost always plan a phone catch-up with a friend during my Hot Girl Walks. I’m struck by just how little time I spend inside my own head, alone with my thoughts. I can’t quite comprehend what it would be like to exist in the 80s or 90s—with so much time to think. My saved folder on Instagram is full of recipes I’ll never cook, health hacks I’ll never try, and podcast episodes I’ll never listen to—so what’s the point?

As Amanda Montell writes in her essay collection The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality, “We’re living in what they call the Information Age, but life only seems to be making less sense. We’re isolated, listless, burnt out on screens, cutting loved ones out like tumors in the spirit of boundaries, failing to understand other people’s choices or even our own.”

So what’s the solution? As nice as a digital detox—or even leaving social media—sounds in theory, it’s impractical when you work in marketing, or use it to keep in touch with friends across the world. Luckily, slocial media is here to save us. In the past couple of years, we’ve started inching away from Big Tech, a combination of privacy concerns, potential legislation changes, and a collective malaise which has given rise to terms like brain rot, doomscrolling and dumb phones. In a slightly tragic example, Buzzfeed even has a Brain Rot Quiz titled “Has TikTok Officially Cooked your Brain?”. In its place, we’re witnessing a rise of startups (mostly founded by women—is this a coincidence?) determined to change the social media space for the better. What do apps like Sunroom, Communia, Landing, and Diem have in common? They’re all user-first platforms with beautiful branding, committed to serving up a social media experience that millennials and Gen Z actually want.

LA-based Communia is a social media platform that grew out of feminist publication Restless Magazine. Communia’s mission is to create “a better digital world for women transforming social media into social self-care”—and they’re walking the walk. They’ve got numerous safeguards in place to ensure the community plays by the rules, including a zero-tolerance approach to abuse, identity protection and the ability to post anonymously, and user-controlled features. They’ve also done away with likes, removing that dopamine hit we associate with major social media platforms, and what keeps up chronically online. Communia doesn’t rely on ads, either: “we are a wellness-first social network. For us, that means protecting your data privacy, and leading with a business model that doesn't require engagement at any cost.” Zuckerberg, take notes.

In a similar vein, Diem is a social search engine, “inspired by how women have shared information for centuries.” Or as one user puts it, “a more helpful and meaningful Reddit.” Diem isn’t about curating the minutiae of your life—it’s about asking a trusted community for answers to your most personal questions. Is a social search engine technically social media? Now that TikTok has officially become the new Googleamongst Gen Z (according to The New York Times, anyway), I’m going with yes.

Sunroom, a “space for women creators to create content & connect intimately with their communities,” is also rising into the mainstream. While it is about documenting your life and sharing your updates with your audience, there’s a twist; users pay to subscribe to someone’s content. Sunroom is also keen to point out what works on the platform: “success is found in scrappy, personal content. posts look like speaking to camera, Close Friends style updates, behind-the-scenes vlogs, with your hottest pics sprinkled in.” Less like-fishing, more connection.

It’s not just the newer platforms that are seeing success: Pinterest has experienced a revival in the past 12 months, in part driven by their substantial Gen Z user base (40% of its active monthly users are from this demographic). WIRED even covered Pinterest’s comeback at the end of 2023, pointing out that “Pinterest is also growing because it fills a different, more positive niche than other forms of social media, serving as a place for exploration and creativity rather than a race for likes and views.” It’s a form of slocial media, not least because it doesn’t have the same algorithm-driven experience that characterize other platforms.

Unlike Instagram or TikTok, where unless you check in multiple times a day, you feel like you’re missing out, Pinterest is a space you can drop into one or twice a month if you so choose. You won’t have missed the latest dance trend, you won’t be out of the loop on the latest trending audio, and there won’t be a new meme format that leaves you googling “what does based mean?”. It’s also less ego-centric: according to Amanda Hoover, ‘people can use Pinterest to find inspiration for hobbies, travel, decor, and style—without having to show themselves living out all those aspirational, and often expensive, trends, or images of their faces and bodies.”

The app Landing is like a Gen Z-specific Pinterest, and is experiencing a similar boom in interest. Landing’s goal is to “create dynamic experiences at the intersection of collective inspiration, authentic expression, and meaningful connection,” which they do both through their app, which allows users to make moodboards using an image library than anyone can add to, and through their chat channels and extensive brand ambassador program. It’s an app that people want to use, because they feel welcomed. Liz Friedland, Landing’s Head of Community, is an instrumental part of this user experience, which focuses on making each user feel like a valued part of the club, in a really wholesome and inclusive way.

Traditional social media isn’t really feeling very social at the moment. Global events like the Israel-Palestine war, with both Islamophobia and Anti-Semitiim on the rise, and the upcoming 2024 US Elections mean the divisions rage on, and social media is not always the most inspiring place to spend our time.

While we can’t return to Carrie Bradshaw’s 1999 era, limiting our screen time, turning towards platforms built with a positive user experience in mind, and focusing on IRL connections are good steps to take if you’re feeling similarly overwhelmed.