Can a Social App Really Fix Social Media's 'Terrible Devastation'? [2025]

Introduction: The Problem Nobody's Solving

You know that feeling? Scrolling for five minutes, then suddenly it's forty-five minutes later and you've gotten absolutely nothing done. You've just watched someone's vacation photos, read three heated arguments about politics, seen an influencer's perfectly curated life, and somehow feel worse about your own day than when you started.

This is the world we've built over the past fifteen years. Social media promised connection. Instead, it delivered a fractured attention span, persistent anxiety, and a nagging sense that everyone's life is better than yours. The psychological toll is real, measurable, and getting worse, as noted by Harvard's research on social media detox.

Now, two people who've actually built successful products are stepping up and saying something radical: we think we can fix this. Biz Stone, the co-founder of Twitter, and Evan Sharp, the co-founder of Pinterest, have launched a company called West Co. Their first app, called Tangle, takes a deliberately different approach to social connection. Instead of infinite feeds, algorithmic surprise, and the constant dopamine hit of notifications, Tangle asks one simple question: "What's your intention for today?"

The company just raised $29 million in funding, led by Spark Capital, suggesting that serious money is betting on this thesis. But here's the real question nobody's asking yet: can good design actually undo the psychological damage that bad design spent fifteen years inflicting?

This article digs into what Tangle is actually trying to do, why the psychological crisis in social media is so severe, and whether intentional design is enough to save us from ourselves. You'll get the full context on how we got here, what's actually broken, and whether this attempt is different from the dozens of "better social media" apps that have failed before it.

Estimated data shows that Threads had the highest initial user count but has since declined significantly, while Bluesky maintains a moderate user base. Mastodon has the smallest active user count.

TL; DR

• The Crisis Is Real: Social media damages mental health in measurable ways—anxiety, depression, and attention problems have all increased sharply since smartphones and social platforms became ubiquitous, as highlighted by the American Psychological Association.
• West Co's Approach: Tangle flips the social media model by starting with user intention, transparency about what you're doing, and sharing goals with friends rather than broadcasting to algorithms.
• The Funding: $29 million led by Spark Capital shows institutional belief that there's both a market and a moral case for better-designed social tools.
• The Challenge: Previous "alternative" social media platforms have failed because they can't overcome the network effect, offer compelling enough reasons to switch, or sustain engagement without the dark patterns that made the incumbents successful.
• The Verdict: Design matters, but it's not a silver bullet—fixing social media requires changes in culture, business models, and how we think about connection itself.

The Devastation Stone Is Actually Talking About

When Evan Sharp says "terrible devastation of the human mind and heart," he's not being poetic. He's describing a measurable public health crisis.

Start with the numbers. The American Psychological Association has documented increases in anxiety and depression rates, particularly among teenagers and young adults, that correlate almost perfectly with the adoption of smartphones and social media. Teenage girls now report higher rates of anxiety and depression than at any point since these surveys began. Self-harm and suicidal ideation have both increased. Eating disorders are more common. The data isn't subtle.

But the numbers don't capture the day-to-day experience. Consider what actually happens when you open Instagram, Tik Tok, or X (formerly Twitter). The app's entire purpose is to keep you scrolling. Every feature—infinite scroll, the auto-play video, algorithmic ranking that surfaces the most inflammatory content, notifications designed to pull you back—is optimized for one metric: time spent in app. More time equals more ads shown, more data collected, more revenue generated.

Your dopamine system didn't evolve for this. You're being poked, prodded, and stimulated in ways that are genuinely difficult to resist. This isn't a character flaw—it's engineering. Hundreds of engineers and designers, backed by billions of dollars, are working specifically to make sure you can't stop using their product. The fact that this damages your mental health is not a bug. It's a consequence of the business model that nobody's willing to change.

Then there's the comparison problem. Social media is, by design, a place where everyone presents their best self. Nobody posts about their bad day, their failed project, or their boring Tuesday. Everyone posts about their wins, their vacations, their perfect moments. You scroll through hundreds of these and, consciously or not, you compare them to your actual life—complete with all its flaws, boredom, and struggle. The gap between other people's highlights and your reality becomes a permanent source of anxiety.

The attention problem is real too. Your capacity for deep focus—the kind of thinking required for creative work, learning, or meaningful relationships—is finite. If you're spending two hours a day in short-dopamine-hit loops, you're literally training your brain to prefer stimulation over depth. Reading a book becomes painful. Sitting with a difficult problem becomes impossible. The cognitive cost of social media isn't just the time spent; it's the damage to your ability to focus on anything else.

Sharp and Stone didn't invent this critique. Researchers, psychologists, and former product leaders from the big tech companies have been saying this for years. But they're the first with both credibility and capital to actually build something different at scale.

The data shows a significant increase in anxiety, depression, and self-harm incidents among teenagers from 2010 to 2020, correlating with the rise of smartphone and social media usage. Estimated data.

How We Got Here: The Evolution of Social Media's Dark Patterns

Understanding why Tangle exists requires understanding how social media became so psychologically damaging in the first place. It didn't happen by accident. It happened through deliberate design choices made by intelligent people trying to solve a very specific business problem.

The original vision for social networks was innocent enough. Mark Zuckerberg wanted to connect people at Harvard. Jack Dorsey wanted to create a broadcast medium where anyone could share ideas. Stone himself was trying to build something similar with Twitter. The core insight—that people want to share and connect—was correct.

But the monetization model corrupted everything. Once you've raised hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital and promised investors exponential growth, you can't just build a simple social network where people check in occasionally to see what their friends are up to. You need growth, retention, and engagement. That means you need to design for addiction.

The dark patterns came incrementally. First, notifications—alerts designed to pull you back into the app. Then, the infinite scroll—removing the page break that used to exist between posts. Then, algorithmic feeds instead of chronological feeds—showing you whatever gets the most engagement rather than what your friends actually posted. Then, the engagement metrics—letting you see exactly how many likes, shares, and comments you got, turning social connection into a quantified status game.

Each of these changes was justified by the same logic: they improve engagement. They keep people in the app longer. They generate more data. They allow for more targeted advertising. And yes, they also make the product more psychologically damaging. But that externality wasn't anyone's problem. The users aren't paying for the product, so their well-being isn't a shareholder concern.

By the time Facebook bought Instagram for

What changed? Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter demonstrated just how much of a mess the whole thing had become. The algorithm is genuinely making people dumber. The misinformation problem is unsolvable within the current system. The mental health costs are becoming politically visible, not just academically established. And Gen Z is increasingly rejecting social media altogether, recognizing it as the psychological trap it is.

There's also a market opportunity here. If you can build a social platform that doesn't destroy mental health, that doesn't addict users, that actually makes people feel better—that's a product people will pay for. Or at least, that's the bet West Co is making.

Meet Tangle: Intention Over Algorithm

So what's Tangle actually doing? The public information is limited because the app launched in invite-only mode in November and isn't fully public yet. But from what's been shared, the basic concept is genuinely novel.

Instead of asking "What do you want to see?" Tangle starts with "What's your intention for today?" Users set a personal goal or intention—maybe it's "finish the project proposal," or "go for a run," or "spend quality time with my partner." You share this intention with your friends, not with the algorithm or some broader network.

Then, as your day goes on, you capture it. You can share updates, photos, and moments from your day. But the crucial difference: these aren't being fed into an algorithm optimized to show the most enraging or addictive content to the maximum number of people. Your friends see your updates. You see theirs. That's it. No infinite scroll of strangers' content. No engagement metrics. No algorithmic feed trying to keep you scrolling.

At the end of the day, you can look back and see how your actual day compared to your intention. Did you achieve your goal? What got in the way? What surprised you? This reframes social media from a broadcast-and-engagement game into something closer to an accountability partner or a shared journal with friends.

The design is deliberately constrained in ways that existing social media intentionally avoids. No infinite scroll. No engagement metrics. No algorithmic ranking. No suggested content from strangers. No ads (at least in the current version). The constraints aren't bugs—they're the entire point. They're designed to prevent the psychological damage that comes from the current social media model.

Stone told the Financial Times that the app could change significantly before its public launch, which suggests even the creators aren't entirely certain this is the right approach yet. That's actually a good sign—it means they're willing to iterate based on what actually helps people rather than doubling down on assumptions.

But here's where it gets tricky. The core insight—that people want to share and connect—is correct. The design approach—removing the dark patterns and focusing on intention—is promising. But the real test is whether people will actually use an app that doesn't exploit their psychology the way incumbents do.

The Business Model Problem: Why Good Design Isn't Enough

Let's be honest about the fundamental challenge Tangle faces. Every successful social platform in history has been built on one of two business models: advertising or network effects so strong that people pay for it.

Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, You Tube, X—all advertising-based. They make money by keeping you engaged and serving you ads. The longer you stay, the more your behavior is tracked, the better the ads can be targeted. This creates an unaligned incentive structure: the platform's goal (maximize time in app) is directly opposed to user well-being.

Snapchat, despite being advertising-based, grew because of network effects so strong—your friends use it—that people choose to use it anyway. Slack, Zoom, and Discord charge money but enable network effects so powerful that the value of being where your contacts are outweighs the cost.

Tangle is trying something different: build a product so good, so psychologically aligned with users' interests, that people will choose to use it even without the engagement-maximizing dark patterns. It's noble. It might even be possible. But it's a massive bet.

The company hasn't announced a business model yet. Are they planning to charge users? Take a subscription approach? Insert ads later once they have an audience? The silence suggests they haven't figured this out. And that's a real problem.

If Tangle charges money, they face the classic Saa S challenge: convincing people to pay for something they can get free (albeit worse for them) elsewhere. The subscription would need to be cheap enough to be appealing but substantial enough to fund the company. Maybe $5-10/month? But most social apps train people to expect free. Even when a free option exists that's worse for them, people often choose it.

If Tangle goes the advertising route, they immediately face the same incentive problem as everyone else. To make advertising profitable at scale, you need to keep people engaged. Engaged users are better advertising inventory. Soon, they're adding engagement metrics, algorithmic ranking, and eventually the dark patterns they're trying to avoid. They'd become Facebook 2.0.

If Tangle tries to bootstrap on pure network effects—banking on the idea that once enough friends are using it, you have to join—they face a chicken-and-egg problem. Nobody wants to join an empty social network. Getting the first million users without dark patterns or advertising is extremely difficult.

This is why every alternative social media platform has failed. Mastodon, Threads (Meta's Twitter competitor), Bluesky, and dozens of smaller attempts have all struggled because they can't overcome these fundamental business model problems. Good design isn't enough when you're competing against products that have 1000x more resources and massive network effects.

West Co has

The average daily time spent by Americans on digital platforms has increased from less than 1 hour in 2008 to over 4 hours in 2023, largely due to the rise of smartphones and algorithmic feeds. Estimated data.

The Network Effect Paradox: Why Your Friends' Defection Matters

Here's something most people don't think about with social networks: the value isn't in the design. The value is in who's on it.

You could design a social app with perfect UX, zero dark patterns, and genuine user well-being as the top priority. But if none of your friends are on it, it's useless. Social networks don't have utility independent of their users. You don't use Instagram because it's well-designed; you use it because your friends are there.

This is called the network effect, and it's both a moat and a prison. It's why Facebook still has billions of users despite most of them acknowledging it makes them unhappy. It's why Tik Tok dominates despite being aggressively addictive. It's why your parents are still on Whats App even though better messaging apps exist. Their friends are on those platforms, so the platforms are valuable regardless of how they're designed.

Tangle faces the inverse problem: it's probably better-designed than the incumbents, but the incumbents have all the network effects. Getting your friends to join means they abandon Instagram, Tik Tok, or X—the places where their other friends are. The switching cost is high, and the rational economic decision is to stay put.

There's a small window where new social platforms can break through this. It typically happens when the incumbent is particularly vulnerable or when the new platform captures a specific demographic completely. Snapchat succeeded because it was so obviously better for sharing ephemeral content and being visual in a way Facebook wasn't. It captured Instagram's original use case before Instagram caught up. Tik Tok succeeded because the algorithm was genuinely remarkable and it captured a generation that grew up online-native in a way Facebook had become uncool.

What's Tangle's angle? The "intention-setting" model is different, but is it different enough? Is it so obviously better at something that large cohorts of people will switch?

Possibly. If Tangle genuinely makes people feel better about their days, if the community is actually supportive rather than comparative, if it solves the genuine problem that social media causes harm—then yes, it could attract people, especially younger people who are increasingly rejecting Instagram and Tik Tok as psychologically damaging.

But that requires a perfect execution on product, culture, and community. Most products don't achieve that.

Comparing to Previous Alternatives: Why This Time Might Be Different

Tangle isn't the first attempt at a "better" social platform. The graveyard of failed alternatives is long and instructive.

Consider Mastodon, a decentralized Twitter alternative. It had everything going for it: perfect timing (people were fed up with X), technical credibility (built on open standards), and explicit rejection of dark patterns. It still peaked at maybe 500,000 active users and has probably half that now. Why? The experience is technically sound but worse in almost every practical way. Fewer people are on it. No celebrities or major news accounts. The interface is more confusing than Twitter. There's no algorithmic feed to discover new content. By almost every metric except "doesn't manipulate you as much," it's worse.

Then there's Bluesky, the Jack Dorsey-funded Twitter alternative built with more Twitter DNA. Better product than Mastodon in many ways. Better design. Better features. As of 2025, maybe 1-2 million active users out of Twitter's 500+ million. It has growth momentum from X's recent drama, but adoption is still marginal. Most people who try it come back to X because... that's where the action is. The content is better. The reach is better. The conversation is happening there, not on Bluesky.

Threads, Meta's competitor to X, launched with enormous advantages: Instagram integration, 1 billion Instagram users, professional design, feature parity with X. It peaked at 100 million users and has hemorrhaged to maybe 5-10 million active users. Why? Even with Meta's advantage, it couldn't overcome two problems: the network effect (your friends aren't on Threads) and the lack of compelling reason to switch (X still works fine for most people).

Why might Tangle be different?

First, it's not trying to be a direct competitor to any incumbent. It's not "Twitter but better designed" or "Instagram without dark patterns." It's a genuinely different thing—a goal-tracking and intention-setting app that happens to have a social component. This avoids the direct comparison problem. You're not asking "should I switch from Instagram to this?" You're asking "is this a useful addition to my life?"

Second, the founders have credibility. Stone co-founded Twitter and founded Medium (which failed, but the intention was good). Sharp co-founded Pinterest and is genuinely respected as a designer. They're not newcomers trying to overthrow the internet; they're veterans who've seen the inside of these systems and recognize the problems.

Third, the product addresses a real, measurable problem: people genuinely feel worse after using social media, and many are actively looking for alternatives. The market opportunity is real even if it's smaller than the total social media market.

Fourth, the business model question is still open. If they solve it creatively—maybe as a subscription starting at $5/month, or positioning it as a productivity tool rather than entertainment, or building specific features that become essential—they could create a sustainable business without relying on engagement-maximization.

But here's the real test: do they maintain their principles as they scale? Every social platform starts noble. Evan Williams started Blogger to democratize publishing. Steve Jobs started Apple to put a computer in every home. The principles corrode when you hit the real incentive structure of the market. The question isn't whether Tangle's current vision is good. It's whether they can maintain it under real pressure.

The Science Behind Intentional Design

Tangle's approach—starting with intention-setting—is grounded in real psychological research, not just vibes.

The concept of "implementation intentions" comes from social psychology. When you set a specific intention ("I will finish my proposal today") rather than just a vague goal ("I should work more"), you're significantly more likely to achieve it. Why? Because specificity creates focus. Your brain starts filtering information through the lens of your intention. You notice opportunities to make progress. You're less susceptible to distraction.

When you share your intention with others—something Tangle does—you add social accountability. You've made a public commitment. There's social cost to failing. Research shows this dramatically increases follow-through rates. The combination of specific intention plus social accountability creates a powerful behavioral change mechanism.

Then there's the end-of-day reflection component. At the end of each day, you look back at your intention and your actual day. Did you achieve it? What got in the way? What surprised you? This is essentially self-directed cognitive behavioral therapy. You're training yourself to notice patterns in your own behavior. You're building self-awareness. Over time, this improves decision-making and reduces anxiety because you're taking active control of your day rather than being passive and reactive.

Compare this to the current social media model, which is designed around entirely different psychology. The algorithm shows you whatever generates the strongest emotional reaction—usually outrage, envy, or lust. Infinite scroll trains your brain to crave novelty and dopamine hits. Engagement metrics train you to judge your self-worth by likes and comments. The entire system is designed to exploit your psychological vulnerabilities, not to help you flourish.

Tangle's model isn't just "less harmful." It's actively beneficial if it works. The intention-setting mechanism addresses the core problem that social media itself creates: the diffusion of focus and the erosion of purposefulness. By making intention primary and feeds secondary, Tangle flips the incentive structure.

Of course, this only works if people actually use the intention-setting features and the company doesn't gradually corrupt the design as they grow. But scientifically, the foundation is sound.

Tangle excels in intention-setting and social accountability, while Instagram and TikTok rely heavily on infinite scroll and algorithmic ranking. Estimated data.

Mental Health Impact: The Real Measure of Success

Ultimately, the only metric that matters for Tangle is whether it actually improves mental health. Everything else is secondary.

Current social media demonstrably worsens mental health. We have longitudinal data showing that increased social media use correlates with increased anxiety, depression, and eating disorders. We have brain imaging showing that the dopamine response to social media is similar to gambling or drugs. We have stories from individuals describing the psychological toll—the comparison, the FOMO, the addiction-like behavior they can't stop even when they recognize it's hurting them.

If Tangle can reverse this—if users of Tangle show lower anxiety, higher life satisfaction, improved focus, and more authentic connection with friends—then it's genuinely valuable regardless of market share or revenue.

But measuring this is tricky. The placebo effect is enormous in psychology. If you believe an app will make you feel better, you'll feel better, at least initially. You need rigorous studies with control groups and longitudinal data. Apple's journal app claims to improve mental health through daily reflection, but there's limited evidence of actual clinical impact. Meditation apps claim efficacy, but results are mixed depending on who's measuring.

West Co hasn't published any mental health research yet, which is understandable for a new product. But if they're serious about the mission—fixing the mental health impact of social media—they should invest in rigorous, independent research. Publish in peer-reviewed journals. Partner with universities. Build the evidence. Otherwise, it's just another app claiming to be better without proof.

The Funding Reality: What $29 Million Actually Means

Spark Capital leading a $29 million seed round is legitimately impressive. Spark is one of the top-tier venture firms. They backed Slack, which was a successful exit. They backed Stripe. They're respected investors.

But let's be clear about what $29 million means in the context of social media. It sounds like a lot. It is a lot if you're bootstrap-starting an app. It's nothing if you're competing against billion-dollar companies.

Breakdown:

To break even once you have decent user engagement, you need either a subscription model with 500K+ paying users at $10/month or millions of users on free with ad monetization. Neither is trivial.

What $29 million does do: it signals serious backing. It means the company can survive long enough to find product-market fit, if it exists. It means they can hire great people who wouldn't otherwise join a risky venture. It means they can afford to be patient with growth rather than compromising principles to hit growth targets immediately.

But it doesn't solve the fundamental problems: the network effect, the business model question, and the assumption that people actually want something different enough to leave the incumbents.

The fact that they raised this much suggests Spark Capital believes in the founding team and the market opportunity. It suggests they think there's genuine demand for an alternative. But venture funding is a bet, not a guarantee. Most ventures fail. Some fail gracefully, producing learning and subsequent success. Some fail spectacularly, burning through capital and achieving nothing. Which path Tangle takes depends entirely on execution.

Could This Actually Scale? The Path Forward

Assuming Tangle survives and gains real traction, what does scale look like?

Scenario one: niche success. Tangle becomes the tool for a specific demographic—maybe young people concerned about social media's mental health impact, or professionals looking for an intention-setting community, or parents concerned about their kids' social media habits. It reaches 5-10 million users, builds a sustainable subscription business at $5-10/month, and becomes profitable. It never becomes a "replacement for Instagram" but it becomes a solid, profitable company that meaningfully improves people's lives. This seems like the most likely positive outcome.

Scenario two: network effect breakthrough. Through extraordinary product quality and cultural shifts around social media, Tangle becomes the place where a critical mass of users go. Your friends are on it. Content creators are on it. News organizations are on it. It reaches 100+ million users and becomes a genuine competitor to existing platforms. The company goes public or gets acquired at a high valuation. This is the venture capital dream outcome but it's rare. Maybe 1-in-100 companies achieve this.

Scenario three: feature acquisition. A larger company (maybe Apple, maybe someone else) recognizes that Tangle has built something valuable and acquires them for their talent, product, or users. The company doesn't independently scale but it's a successful exit for investors and founders. The product may or may not survive acquisition.

Scenario four: failure. Tangle can't gain meaningful traction, burns through its capital, and shuts down by 2027 or 2028. The reason will probably be network effects or the inability to convert casual users to regular users. The founding team learns something, moves on to the next venture. The users go back to Instagram and Tik Tok. Nothing changes in the broader social media landscape.

The base rates are sobering. Most startups fail. Most social networks fail. Most funded startups that try to compete with entrenched players fail. Tangle has better founders than most, better funding than most, and a real problem they're trying to solve. But so did most of the alternatives that failed.

What would change the odds? First, extraordinary execution on product. Second, solving the business model question early and transparently. Third, building genuine community rather than just users. Fourth, strategic partnerships with schools, workplaces, or other institutions that could drive adoption. Fifth, specific features that become essential that existing platforms don't have.

Tangle has time and resources to figure this out. Whether they actually do remains to be seen.

The introduction of engagement features like notifications, infinite scroll, and algorithmic feeds occurred incrementally over time, contributing to increased user engagement. Estimated data.

The Broader Implications: What Tangle Means for Social Media's Future

Whatever happens to Tangle specifically, its existence signals something important about where the industry is heading.

The current social media model—engagement maximization through dark patterns, monetized by ads, organized by algorithmic ranking—is increasingly recognized as unsustainable. Not just economically, but socially. We broke something, and the broken-ness is becoming visible.

We're seeing this across multiple fronts. Regulatory pressure is increasing. The EU is implementing digital regulations. Various countries are considering social media restrictions for minors. Lawsuit after lawsuit is being filed against major platforms for harms to mental health. Internal research from Meta (leaked by Frances Haugen and the Wall Street Journal) showed that the company knew about the mental health harms but downplayed them.

Users are voting with their feet too. Gen Z adoption of Tik Tok is massive, but adoption of Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter is declining in many markets. People are spending less time in feeds and more time in closed groups, private chats, and alternative platforms. The massive engagement that fueled growth is starting to plateau and decline.

Into this environment, Tangle represents a bet on a different model. Not "less engagement" (which would make revenue impossible), but "different quality of engagement." Not trying to manipulate users into spending more time, but trying to design in ways that align with user well-being.

If Tangle succeeds, it will validate this approach. Other founders will copy it. Investors will fund similar ventures. You'll see an ecosystem of social products that prioritize user well-being over engagement metrics. Existing platforms will be forced to respond or lose users.

If Tangle fails, it will suggest that network effects and business model realities are just too strong. That you can't build a social network that doesn't rely on engagement-maximizing dark patterns. That the users don't actually want alternatives badly enough to make the switching cost worth it.

Either way, Tangle is a test case for whether social media can be fixed without being replaced entirely.

Design Principles: What Makes Tangle Different

Beyond the intention-setting concept, Tangle embodies several design principles that distinguish it from incumbent platforms.

First: transparency about intention. Users set a public intention at the start of each day. This immediately changes the game. You're not curating a persona; you're setting a goal. Your friends see what you're trying to accomplish, not just your wins. This reframes the entire exchange from "look how great my life is" to "here's what I'm working on."

Second: bounded social graph. You share with friends, not with algorithms or a broad network. This removes the incentive to perform for strangers or maximize reach. There's no viral loop. There's no optimization for algorithmic ranking. You're sharing with people you know and trust.

Third: constrained feed. No infinite scroll. No algorithmic discovery of new content. You see your friends' updates and reflections, and that's it. This prevents the comparison trap and the stimulus-seeking behavior that makes social media addictive.

Fourth: reflection mechanism. At the end of each day, you capture how your actual day compared to your intention. This creates accountability and self-awareness. It's self-directed behavioral intervention.

Fifth: no engagement metrics. No like counts, no view counts, no ratio of comments to shares. You can't optimize for engagement because the signals that would allow you to optimize are hidden. This removes the quantified-self game that turns social connection into a status competition.

Sixth: privacy assumptions. Unlike Facebook and Instagram, which track and monetize every interaction, Tangle should assume user privacy is valuable. No ad targeting based on your intentions or reflections. No selling of behavioral data. This aligns incentives: the company makes money from subscriptions, not from exploiting users' data.

Any one of these principles could be corrupted. A subscription app could add engagement metrics to increase retention. It could introduce ads and start tracking behavior. It could open up the social graph and introduce algorithmic ranking. The question isn't whether these are good ideas—they're obviously good ideas for growth and revenue. The question is whether the company will resist them.

This is the central tension in Tangle's future. Everything that would make it scale faster—engagement metrics, algorithmic feeds, broader networks, ads—would also make it psychologically damaging. The founders seem to understand this, but understanding and resisting are different things when you're under pressure to grow.

Competitive Threats: Who Might Kill Tangle

Tangle faces competition not just from existing social media platforms but from several other sources.

First: existing platforms co-opting features. If Tangle gains any real traction, Meta will absolutely copy it. They'll add an "intention" feature to Instagram or Threads. They'll tone down the engagement metrics in certain sections of the app. They'll position it as a healthier alternative to their main feed. Most users won't switch because they're already on Instagram and can get both services there. This is how incumbents kill innovation: not through competition but through feature parity.

Second: entrenched network effects. Even if Tangle is better-designed, most of your friends are on Instagram or Tik Tok. You need them to switch, which means they need critical mass, which creates a chicken-and-egg problem. Tangle needs to grow fast enough to create genuine network effects before people get bored and leave. This is extremely difficult.

Third: user behavior. People's attachment to existing platforms is strong. Habits are hard to break. Even when people acknowledge that social media is making them unhappy, they still use it because everyone else is there and there's nothing better. Tangle is better, but is it better enough? The question will be decided by millions of small individual decisions, each one made without perfect information.

Fourth: subtle corruption. The most dangerous threat is internal. As the company grows and faces pressure to monetize and scale, the temptation will be to gradually compromise principles. Add engagement metrics "just for the dashboard." Add algorithmic ranking "just for new users." Add ads "just as an option." Cut back on the reflection features "because users don't use them." Each compromise is small and justifiable. Together, they turn Tangle into everything it set out not to be.

Fifth: the macro-environment. If regulation increases and governments start restricting social media or imposing costs, that could shift the entire landscape. If a major scandal hits social media (worse than the current ones), regulatory backlash could create space for alternatives. Conversely, if governments prop up incumbents through favorable regulation, Tangle's odds worsen. These forces are outside the company's control but could determine its fate.

Estimated data shows key factors influencing Tangle's potential success or failure. Healthy addiction and preference for algorithmic feeds are significant influences.

What Researchers Say: The Evidence Base

West Co's theory—that better design can address social media's mental health impact—is grounded in real research. But what do actual researchers and clinicians think about approaches like Tangle?

There's genuine scientific consensus that current social media is psychologically damaging, particularly for young people. The evidence is overwhelming and comes from multiple independent sources: longitudinal studies, brain imaging, clinical reports, and surveys.

There's also consensus on what makes social media psychologically damaging: infinite scroll, algorithmic ranking that prioritizes engagement, quantified metrics like likes and followers, and the comparison trap created by curated content.

Where researchers are less certain is whether good design alone can fix these problems. Some argue that the fundamental issue isn't the design but the business model. As long as the company profits from engagement, engagement-maximizing design will eventually emerge, whether intentionally or through competitive pressure. Others argue that certain design choices (like bounded networks, no infinite scroll, and no engagement metrics) fundamentally prevent the psychological damage from emerging, regardless of business model.

What researchers universally agree on: the current model is broken and something needs to change. Whether Tangle is the solution is a different question.

The Role of Intention-Setting Beyond Social Media

Tangle's core insight—that starting with intention and building accountability around it improves outcomes—is actually much broader than social media.

The productivity app space is full of tools built on this principle. Todoist helps you set intentions through project planning. Asana and Monday.com organize work around shared intentions. Notion lets you reflect and organize thoughts.

Where Tangle is different: it's combining the intention-setting mechanism with social accountability and end-of-day reflection, all in one consumer-focused product. It's applying B2C design sensibilities to what has traditionally been B2B software.

This could be a massive advantage. B2B tools are often clunky because the buyer (the company) isn't the user (the employee). B2C apps are better-designed because the designer has to please the person actually using it. If Tangle brings B2C design sensibilities to intention-setting, it could create something that's both powerful and genuinely pleasant to use.

But it also means Tangle is competing not just with other social apps but with the entire productivity app ecosystem. If Asana or Notion decide to add social intention-setting features, they could easily kill Tangle's value proposition. They have distribution (companies already using their platforms), capital, and technical depth.

Tangle's advantage is focus. It does one thing—intention-setting and reflection with social accountability—and does it well. The productivity giants do many things. If Tangle executes better on that specific use case, it could win. But if the giants prioritize it, Tangle loses.

Ethical Questions: Is This Enough?

Let's zoom out and ask the harder question: even if Tangle succeeds, is it enough?

The "terrible devastation of the human mind and heart" that Sharp described isn't just about individual app design. It's about a broader shift in how we relate to technology, to each other, and to ourselves. We've outsourced our attention to companies whose profit depends on monopolizing that attention. We've turned social connection into a quantified game. We've created environments where billions of people compare their actual lives to everyone else's curated highlights.

Will a better-designed app fix this? Partially. If Tangle succeeds and reaches hundreds of millions of users, it will meaningfully improve mental health outcomes. It will show that another way is possible. It will prove that people prefer apps that don't exploit them, at least given an alternative.

But it won't solve the systemic problems. Governments and regulations will still need to change how platforms can collect and monetize data. Society will still need to have conversations about how much of our attention we want to hand over to any company. Individuals will still need to develop stronger relationships with their own attention and choices rather than relying on app design to save them.

Tangle is a necessary step but not a sufficient one. It's treating the symptom (bad social media apps) rather than the disease (the belief that connection should be mediated by platforms designed for profit). Real healing requires both better apps and better systems.

The Verdict: A Real Attempt at Something Different

Here's my honest assessment: Tangle is the most serious attempt yet to build a social platform that doesn't destroy mental health. Stone and Sharp are credible founders with real understanding of what went wrong. The design principles are sound and grounded in actual psychology. The funding validates the market opportunity. The timing is right—people are increasingly rejecting the current model.

But success is far from certain. The network effect is real. The business model question is unsolved. The path to scale is unclear. And history suggests that most attempts to replace entrenched social platforms fail, even with good products and smart founders.

If Tangle succeeds, it will be because:

1. The intention-setting and reflection mechanism is genuinely addictive in a healthy way
2. Users find more value in a constrained social graph with close friends than in algorithmic feeds from millions of strangers
3. The company finds a sustainable business model that doesn't require engagement-maximization
4. They maintain product discipline even under scaling pressure
5. The broader environment shifts toward supporting alternatives (through regulation, cultural change, or both)

If Tangle fails, it will be because:

1. Most users prefer the excitement and stimulation of algorithmic feeds, even when they know it's unhealthy
2. Network effects are insurmountable—your friends just aren't there
3. The business model doesn't work at scale
4. Incumbents copy the features that make Tangle appealing and undermine the need to switch
5. The fundamental tension between growth and mental health can't be solved through design alone

My guess? Tangle becomes a successful niche product (scenario one above). It reaches millions of engaged users who genuinely prefer its model. It builds a sustainable subscription business. It improves mental health for its users. It never "replaces" Instagram or Tik Tok, but it proves that another way is possible and pushes the incumbents to evolve.

That's not the venture capital dream outcome (100 million users and a $20 billion exit), but it's a genuinely valuable outcome. It helps people. It advances the conversation about how technology should be designed. It creates space for alternatives.

Whether that's what actually happens depends entirely on execution, circumstances beyond the company's control, and millions of individual choices by users deciding whether this particular alternative is worth the switching cost.

The question isn't whether Tangle can fix social media. The question is whether, in a world where we've created billions of people addicted to engagement-maximizing apps, enough of us want to be fixed badly enough to actually switch.

FAQ

What exactly is Tangle and how is it different from other social apps?

Tangle is a social app built by West Co, founded by Biz Stone and Evan Sharp, that focuses on intention-setting rather than algorithmic engagement. Instead of infinite scrolls and engagement metrics, Tangle asks users to set a daily intention, share it with friends, capture their day, and reflect on how their actual day compared to their goal. It removes dark patterns like infinite scroll, algorithmic ranking, and like counts that make existing social media psychologically addictive.

How does the intention-setting mechanism work psychologically?

The intention-setting mechanism is based on research showing that specific, public goals increase follow-through significantly. When you set an intention ("finish my project" vs. "get stuff done"), your brain filters information through that lens. When you share it with friends, you add social accountability. When you reflect at day's end, you build self-awareness through what's essentially cognitive behavioral therapy. This combination creates behavioral change without the addictive dark patterns that current social media uses.

Why would people switch from Instagram or Tik Tok to Tangle if their friends aren't there?

This is the core problem Tangle faces. Network effects mean the value of a social platform is determined by who's on it, not how it's designed. People would need compelling enough reasons to switch that the cost of leaving their existing networks is justified. Tangle's bet is that the mental health benefits and more authentic connection are compelling enough, especially for users increasingly aware of social media's harms. But this remains an unproven hypothesis.

What's the business model for Tangle and how will it make money?

The company hasn't explicitly announced a business model yet, which is a significant uncertainty. Most likely approaches include subscription ($5-10/month), though it could be advertiser-supported, freemium with paid features, or something else entirely. The challenge is that engagement-maximizing business models (like ads) tend to corrupt well-intentioned design over time. The company will need to find a sustainable model that doesn't require them to exploit users' psychology for revenue.

How does Tangle compare to other "alternative" social networks that have already failed?

Tangle has advantages over platforms like Mastodon, Bluesky, and Threads: better-resourced founders, clearer design philosophy, $29 million in funding, and a differentiated product rather than "Twitter but different." However, it faces the same fundamental challenges: network effects, the difficulty of onboarding users to an empty platform, and the question of whether good design alone can overcome the network effect advantages of incumbents. Most alternatives have failed historically, though Tangle's approach and team are genuinely stronger than most.

What would make Tangle actually succeed at scale?

Tangle would need: genuine product-market fit where the intention-setting and reflection mechanism is so valuable that users prefer it to algorithmic feeds; a sustainable business model that doesn't require engagement-maximization; network effects strong enough among a critical demographic to create compounding growth; product discipline to resist the temptation to add dark patterns as they scale; and favorable macro conditions (regulatory pressure on incumbents, continued decline in Gen Z adoption of existing platforms, cultural shifts away from engagement-maximized design).

Could Tangle actually improve mental health compared to existing social media?

Yes, if the design principles hold. The intention-setting mechanism, bounded social graph, lack of infinite scroll, and absence of engagement metrics directly address the psychological harm mechanisms of current social media. However, this only works if the company maintains these principles as it grows and doesn't gradually corrupt the design with dark patterns. Real impact would require independent research and clinical validation, which hasn't been conducted yet.

How is Tangle's $29 million funding different from what other alternatives raised?

Tangle raised $29 million from Spark Capital, a top-tier venture firm. This is more than most alternative social networks and signals serious institutional belief in the opportunity. However, it's tiny compared to the billions that major platforms control. The funding is enough to reach 1-2 million users with good execution, enough to find product-market fit, but not enough to compete at the scale of incumbents without achieving strong unit economics.

What happens if Meta just copies Tangle's features?

Meta (or any incumbent) could absolutely copy Tangle's intention-setting, reflection, and bounded social graph features. This is actually the most likely way Tangle fails. Users wouldn't need to switch because Instagram could add these features within their existing network. However, this outcome also validates Tangle's core insight: that people want a better-designed social experience. If Meta is forced to offer similar features to retain users, Tangle's existence will have improved social media for everyone, even if Tangle itself doesn't scale.

Is good app design actually enough to fix social media's mental health problems?

No, but it's necessary. The fundamental issues with current social media are both design (dark patterns, infinite scroll, engagement metrics) and business model (monetized through ads that profit from engagement-maximization). Good design is essential but not sufficient. Real solutions require design changes, business model alignment, and likely regulatory intervention to prevent platforms from exploiting psychology for profit. Tangle addresses the design part beautifully but the business model question remains critical.

Should I try Tangle now or wait until it's more established?

Depends on what you're looking for. If you want a tool that genuinely helps with intention-setting and daily reflection, the current version is probably valuable even with a small network. If you want a social network with all your friends and rich content, wait—and it might never reach that scale. Tangle's real value isn't as a "replacement" for Instagram but as a complementary tool for personal accountability and intentional living. Judge it on that basis, not on whether it becomes the next Instagram.

Conclusion: Betting on a Different Future

We've spent fifteen years building social media optimized for one thing: keeping us engaged and exposed to advertising. We've externalized the cost of that system onto our own mental health and the well-being of an entire generation. We've made this choice thousands of times a day in small increments: opening an app we know makes us feel worse because the alternative is boredom or missing something.

Tangle represents a bet that we don't have to keep making that choice. That it's possible to build social tools that connect people without exploiting them. That we can have intention, reflection, and accountability without comparison, addiction, and harm.

Is this bet going to work? I don't know. The odds aren't great—most product alternatives to entrenched platforms fail. The network effect is powerful. The incentive structures that created the current broken system are still in place. And even with the best intentions, companies face pressure to grow and monetize in ways that corrupt their initial vision.

But here's what matters: someone serious is trying. Someone with credibility is willing to stake their reputation and real money on the hypothesis that another way is possible. That effort itself shifts the landscape. It proves that the current model isn't inevitable. It validates what millions of people already know: that something fundamental is broken and needs to change.

Whether Tangle specifically succeeds or fails, it's pointing in the right direction. It's asking the right questions. It's trying to solve a problem that genuinely matters: how to be human in a world of digital platforms designed to exploit our humanity.

That's worth paying attention to, whether or not you become a user. The future of social media—and arguably the future of human connection itself—might depend on whether bets like Tangle's work out.

Key Takeaways

• Tangle's intention-setting mechanism addresses real psychological damage from current social media by starting with daily goals rather than algorithmic feeds.
• The founding team (Biz Stone, Evan Sharp) and $29 million funding validate the seriousness of this attempt, but most alternatives to dominant platforms fail due to network effects.
• Success requires solving three critical problems simultaneously: product-market fit for the mental health benefits, a sustainable business model, and overcoming incumbents' network effects.
• Even if Tangle fails as a product, its existence validates that social media can be designed differently and might force existing platforms to evolve.
• The fundamental tension remains: platforms monetized by ads must maximize engagement, which typically harms user well-being, so Tangle's business model answer will determine its actual impact.

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