Social is TV. Are You Measuring It That Way?
The way I keep in touch with my friends on social media in 2026 is by typing their names in the search box.
Not scrolling. Not waiting for the algorithm to show me their updates between AI slop, a crypto ad, or a cat video. I go to the search bar, type their name, and click their profile. Like it's 2009 and I'm looking someone up on the school computer.
It's the only workaround I've found to counter every platform's drive to turn what used to be a social network into short-form TV. From lean in to lean back. And this shift — from social to television — isn't just a "me" frustration. It's a measurement problem, too.
Social media is no longer social. It's broadcasting.
TikTok figured this out years ago and positioned itself as an entertainment engine. LinkedIn feeds you +80% strangers. Instagram interrupts your friend's Stories with ads every second tap. Facebook... who is on Facebook these days?
Every platform started with the same promise: connect with the people you care about. Every platform ended in the same place: hold you on screen as long as possible and sell that little attention you still have to brands. The social part was the hook. Your attention is the product.
Nothing new here. But why are we still planning, buying, and measuring social as if it's a community conversation?
3 things that change when you accept that social is TV.
1. Your benchmarks are wrong. We compare social metrics to other social metrics. Engagement rates, follower growth, shares. But if the context is entertainment: passive scrolling, shallow attention, algorithmic delivery to strangers, then the right comparison isn't last quarter's social performance. It's TV. Compare your social CPMs to your video CPMs. Compare your social reach quality to your broadcast reach quality. You might find you're paying a premium for a worse version of what TV already delivers.
2. Your social creative isn't good enough for TV. And that's a problem, because TV is what you're competing with. If a 15-second Reel sits between Netflix, YouTube, and live sports, it needs to work like a TV spot, not like a boosted post with a logo slapped on at the end. Most social content wouldn't survive 3 seconds on a big TV screen. So why do we expect it to survive in a feed that now behaves exactly like one?
3. Your measurement is stuck in 2016. Some still measure social with engagement metrics — likes, comments, shares — as if those signals meant what they did when feeds were chronological, and organic reach was real. When +80% of your impressions go to people who don't expect to see you, engagement rate measures entertainment value. Start measuring social the way you measure TV: reach, frequency, attention quality, and sales contribution. Not vanity. Effectiveness.
Social is the new TV. The platforms know it. The only people still pretending otherwise are the marketers buying it and the agencies selling it. Brief it like TV. Measure it like TV.
That's the professional reality. Here's the personal one.
What I want from social media in 2026.
3 things. More time away from social media. More excuses to pick up the phone and hear a real voice. And more reasons to see the actual people I follow, not their curated stories, but their real faces across a table.
The search box will have to do for now. But it shouldn't have to.