If you’re like me, you’ve gotten unexpected notifications on TikTok saying, ‘Your contact is on Lemon8. Follow them to stay updated.’ My initial reaction was, ‘What on earth is Lemon8?’ However, after a few weeks, a couple of friends urged me to download this new social media app that mixes TikTok and Pinterest. A few days later, a teacher told my class that we just had to get on Substack and Bluesky. Yet again, I was completely lost. I had never heard of any of these new platforms and started wondering if I was out of the media loop. I began to question: Could we be entering a new era of social media? To further investigate, I joined all three of these new apps and tried them out for a few days. Here is what I found.
Substack: The Short-Form Platform We Didn’t Know We Needed
Substack, recommended to me by my journalism professor and a fellow reporter he was interviewing, is a mix of X (formerly Twitter), Pinterest, and a regular news website. It challenges the shrinking attention spans of contemporary social media users by offering a range of content, such as short tweet-like posts and longer 5-10 minute reads. Like most media platforms, users can select their interests and are shown newsletters that relate to their passions. These range from 4-minute reads about starting a garden to 38-minute reads about the overlap between economics and AI.
Substack is rapidly growing in popularity. The app is currently ranked third in the news section of the Apple App Store and boasts over 35 million active subscribers. Users report that it is a safe, quiet community where people admire each other’s work instead of putting each other down. The site was a refreshing break from the overwhelming, fast-paced content I consume on a daily basis. From reading a 7-minute story about a neighborhood coffee-drinking group to a 4-minute story about the importance of telling people what they need to hear, Substack is an invigorating experience that I recommend to people who enjoy reading the news or scrolling on X.
Bluesky: The Golden Ages of OG Twitter, With a Few Tweaks
Bluesky, an increasingly popular alternative to X, has gained traction following Elon Musk’s changes to the platform. Many users of X felt that the platform was becoming unrecognizable, toxic, and overly political. Out of this chaos and unhappiness, Bluesky emerged as a new yet familiar challenger. Originally, Bluesky was a research initiative under X until it split off in 2021. Since then, the company has been independent and has slowly grown its fanbase. Currently, Bluesky is #16 in the Apple App Store for social networking apps, has a 4.3-star rating, and has reached almost 34 million active users (Stats for Bluesky, Link). Many celebrities have become avid Bluesky users, including, but not limited to, Ben Stiller, Stephen King, Mark Cuban, and Lizzo.
Upon my first few visits to the site, I discovered that the platform is literally X in almost every sense. The aesthetic, the content, the mechanics—the entire app felt like a replica of Twitter before the X rebrand, which many people refer to as the golden ages of the app. However, after I consumed more content, I found a few key differences. First off, there is a LOT of political content, which I usually enjoy. However, it can be a bit much. I began liking more art and gaming-related content to try and diversify my feed, but then my feed was only art content. Ultimately, curating content to your liking takes time. A few other aspects I noted were that most posts did not get a whole lot of likes, it was a bit more complicated to navigate, and the “trending” topics seemed to be categories I selected that I was interested in, not actual popular topics. Ultimately, I would say that Blueksy is a strong alternative to X, but could use a some work when it comes to content curation and general mechanics.
Lemon8: An Instagram-Like Experience that Might be a Little Too Similar
Lemon8, which is powered by TikTok, is essentially described by many users as a mixture of all the popular social media platforms. The app features a Pinterest-like layout that displays mostly slideshow posts that range from advice columns to outfit inspiration. Unlike many other social media platforms, there is a lack of cultural, political, or news-related content, and it focuses mainly on uplifting posts. Like TikTok and Instagram, you can like, comment, share posts, and save them into collections. My observation is that almost all comments and posts are solely positive, and there is an absence of any hateful material, unlike on regular media platforms. This could be due to the app’s infancy or the simplicity of its content.
Following the previous TikTok ban, Lemon8 saw a massive uptick in usage, with more than 12.5 million members in December 2024 (AP News, Link). Introduced to the United States in 2023, the app saw an initial wave of popularity, which died down until 2025, when it saw a resurgence of activity. In my experience, Lemon8 was boring and reused, for lack of a nicer way to put it. The content was highly similar to what I consume on Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest, minus the comical and informational content, which is what I enjoy the most. There was a sense of community and artistic expression that I enjoyed, but the lack of comedy and debate made the app bland to me. In my opinion, Lemon8 contains nothing novel that makes it worth downloading, but this does not mean that it is not worth trying. If you enjoy content focused on advice, home improvement, books, recipes, or anything of this sort, give it a chance.
The Elephant in the Room: Should I Switch What Social Media Apps I’m Using?
To keep it simple, use the social media apps you enjoy the most! After trying out these three new sites, I recommend you give each of them a fair chance, along with any other up-and-coming platforms you have heard of. The social media world is experiencing a lot of changes right now, and the best way to navigate it is to prioritize what content you want to see, not what is necessarily the most popular. I am definitely going to continue browsing Substack, and will continue to use Bluesky and Lemon8 to decide if they are worth keeping or deleting. While I wouldn’t say we are entering a new “era” of social media, there are definitely plenty of emerging social media platforms that are worth a download!