What housing attracts views on social media may not exactly be what people want to live in:

Social media platforms are having a field day with microapartments and tiny homes like Mr. Marshall’s, breathing life into the curiosity about that way of living. The small spaces have captivated viewers, whether they are responding to soaring housing prices or to a boundary-pushing alternate lifestyle, as seen on platforms like the Never Too Small YouTube channel. But while there is no precise count on the number of tiny homes and microapartments on the market, the attention on social media has not necessarily made viewers beat a path in droves to move in, perhaps because the spaces sometimes can be a pain to live in…

Viewers of microapartment videos are like visitors to the Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary in San Francisco Bay who “get inside of a cell and have the door closed,” said Karen North, a professor of digital social media at the University of Southern California.

Social media users want to experience what it’s like at the “anomalously small end” of the housing scale, she explained…

Pablo J. Boczkowski, a professor of communications studies at Northwestern University, said that despite the belief that new technologies have a powerful influence, millions of clicks don’t translate into people making a wholesale lifestyle change.

Perhaps it will take a long term social media effort for people to adopt tiny homes? What could be curiosity at the beginning could become normalized as more and more people are exposed to popular images. If such tiny homes are still drawing a lot of views and engagement in a few years, could this add up to something?

Yet, any tiny home revolution has not materialized, at least to this point. Having an extremely small home does not seem appealing long term. It might be an option for vacations or in an extreme housing price situation or better than the alternative of no housing. If people have some resources, they will seek out and find other options.

Still, I would not be surprised if more tiny or smaller residences attract social media hits in the coming years. If under 100 or 200 square feet is too small, could more housing options at 200-500 feet prove attractive in real life and on smartphones?