Not everything becomes television: why the media paradigm is more complex

The idea that " everything that isn't television is becoming television " is powerful because it captures a real phenomenon: the centrality of video and continuous flow on digital platforms. Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Facebook have progressively replaced the logic of social connection with that of algorithmic entertainment.
The feed has become programming, social networking has transformed into personalized streaming. This analogy works as a provocation, but it risks being reductive. Because while it's true that digital media is tending toward the television format, it's equally true that it doesn't end there . Raymond Williams spoke of television's " flow " as a flow without beginning or end .
But the digital feed, while sharing this logic, introduces a new element: the ability to interrupt, search, and divert .

Structural differences: television is broadcast, social media is interactive

Traditional television is a broadcast : a broadcast center, millions of passive viewers. Social media, even in their most "televisual" form, retain characteristics that radically distinguish them:

• Interactivity : likes, comments, shares, remixes. Even when we watch strangers' videos, we can react, engage, and create.

• Personalization : The algorithm is not a single schedule, but a different flow for each user.

• Widespread production : There is no broadcasting center. Any user can become a producer, although visibility is unequal.

These differences make the digital experience closer to a participatory ecosystem than to a simple television show. On YouTube , I can switch between an entertainment video and a university lecture . On TikTok, I can discover a music trend and transform it into creative content . On Instagram , I can alternate between entertainment and personal relationships. The feed, therefore, is not just passive nourishment: it is also archive, research, discovery . Television does everything but doesn't offer this possibility .

The community dimension resists

It's true that only 7% of time on Instagram is spent with friends. But this doesn't mean the social dimension has disappeared. Digital communities have moved elsewhere: to private groups , chats , Discord servers , Telegram channels . Television had no community. Social media, even in its televised form, continues to generate spaces for belonging and dialogue . This change isn't the end of sociality, but its relocation .

AI is not television, it's generation

Artificial intelligence platforms that produce endless videos (Sora, Vibes) seem to embody the logic of television. But in reality, they operate on a different level: they don't broadcast, they generate content . Television repeats content already produced. AI creates new content, even if it's often meaningless or worthless. This difference becomes—and is, in fact—crucial: AI is not television, it transforms into a narrative machine . The risk is not only passivity, but the saturation of meaning : an excess of content that no longer has a human referent.

Why the television analogy is insufficient

To say that everything is becoming television is to understate the complexity of contemporary media. In reality, we're witnessing a hybridization :

• Television : flow, spectacle, emotion.

• Sociality : interaction, community, belonging.

• Storage : search, memory, access.

• AI Generation : Automatic Production, Saturation.

Digital media isn't converging toward a single attraction, but toward a plurality of forms that coexist and intermingle. For those working in communications, marketing, and publishing, the lesson is clear. It's not enough to think in television terms. We must recognize the plurality of languages ​​and the diversity of practices . The challenge is not just to capture attention, but to create meaning in a fragmented ecosystem.

The risk is not that everything becomes television, but that everything becomes noise . True skill will be distinguishing noise from meaning, flow from construction, entertainment from community. Thus, the digital world is not simply television. It is more complex, more contradictory, more layered. Television is an attractor, but not the only element of attraction. In an ecosystem where flows, communities, archives, and artificial generations coexist , the real challenge is inhabiting complexity . The winner will not be those who produce the most videos, but those who know how to create value beyond the flow : spaces of meaning, of relationships, of thought .

The Censis 2024 Communication Report highlights how television remains the most popular medium among Italians, with a penetration rate of 94.1% , while social networks reach 85.3% . This isn't a matter of substitution, but of coexistence : TV maintains its unifying power, while social networks fragment the experience. This coexistence demonstrates that the television paradigm hasn't absorbed everything: rather, it has hybridized with new logics of interaction and personalization.

The concept of flow and its evolution

As already reiterated, Raymond Williams defined television "flow" as a flow without beginning or end, a distinctive feature of broadcasting . Today, digital feeds take up this logic but introduce new elements: the ability to interrupt, search, and divert . Subsequent studies have shown how the concept of flow has transformed into "interactive streaming ," where the user is not a passive spectator but an active participant in the process.

Free time and social capital

Robert Putnam, in Bowling Alone (2000) , documented the decline in civic participation in the USA, linking it also to free time spent in front of the television. Between 1965 and 1995, Americans gained six hours of free time per week , but they devoted them to TV .

Today, history seems to be repeating itself, but with one difference: time spent on social media is not just passive consumption , but also community interaction . Digital communities have moved to private groups, chats, Discord servers, and Telegram channels . Television had no community; social media, even in their televised form, continues to generate spaces of belonging.

Algorithms and mental health

Recent university studies (Padua, 2024; Locatelli, 2023) have analyzed the "algorithmic turn": algorithms not only distribute content, but shape social and cultural practices. Algorithmic personalization contributes to filter bubbles and anxiety among Gen Z and Millennials . Cognitive studies highlight the neurocognitive vulnerability of adolescents exposed to endless feeds. These data show that the problem is not television, but the algorithmic logic that shapes behaviors and perceptions.

In this sense, visual social media cannot be reduced to a simple television analogy. Rather, they represent an ontogenetic ecosystem , where devices, images, practices, and algorithms shape each other, creating an environment that is not only one of consumption but also of production, interaction, and cultural transformation.

The STS perspective reminds us that technology is never neutral: it enables and constrains, offers and denies possibilities, constructs affordances that users reinterpret and modify through collective and individual practices . In this process, algorithmic logics are not a fixed destiny, but a field of continuous adaptation, where users experiment, resist, imitate, and innovate . In this sense, STS perspective aimed at questioning the tools provided for research and their functioning, with the aim of understanding the processes through which it is possible to arrive at knowledge accepted as scientific, also including all those factors (e.g., social) often considered extraneous to science, which nevertheless equally contribute to the transition from science in action to science ready for use.

The relevance of visual social media lies in their ability to shape the contemporary imagination : images are no longer simply representations , but performative acts that connect the subject to an action, and that allow us to grasp the anthropological journey between individual and collective needs . In this sense, platforms become laboratories of meaning , places where the boundaries between private and public, between aesthetics and politics, between entertainment and knowledge are continually redefined .

The closure can only be a challenge : if everything seems to tend towards the televisual flow, the real challenge is to recognize that not everything becomes television .
Visual social media force us to think about complexity, to read images as central tools of social analysis , and to understand that their power lies not only in filling time, but in redefining the very forms of our collective imagination .

The digital world isn't simply television. It's more complex, more contradictory, more layered. Television is an attractor, but not the only one.

In an ecosystem where flows, communities, archives, and artificial generations coexist, the real challenge for media professionals is inhabiting complexity . The winners won't be those who produce the most videos, but those who can create value beyond the flow: spaces of meaning, relationships, thought, and new and advanced interactive content.

Reputable sources for further study:

• Censis Report on Communication 2024

• Raymond Williams, Television: Technology and Cultural Form

• Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone (2000)

• Locatelli, The Algorithmic Turn (2023); University of Padua, studies on Gen Z and algorithmic feeds

• Studies on Generative AI and Media (2024–2025)