Social media has the ability to send its users into a spiral of self-pity one day and transform their lives through the power of community the next. Canvas8 spoke to Sarah Raphael, co-author of Mixed Feelings, about our love-hate relationship with social media and what this means for brands.

The surge in screen-time sparked by COVID-19 has left some people mentally and emotionally fatigued. Yet online habits don’t have to be defined by ‘doomscrolling’ and unrealistic social feeds. How can ‘digital gardens’ facilitate a calmer and more cooperative way to interact on the web?

The demand for more authentic online communities is surging in the wake of the pandemic. Soul, a Chinese social media app and ‘virtual social playground’, focuses on building emotional connections through immersive worlds, putting individual interests and personalities first.

Looking to swap out the culture of infinite online engagement for more intentional social interaction, Minus is a platform bringing a scarcity mindset to people's social media use by limiting the number of posts a user can create to 100 over a lifetime – no exceptions.