The way people engage has changed, and it’s not great news for businesses
There was a time when social media really was about being social. Kicking off with the excellent Myspace in 2003, hotly followed by LinkedIn (yes really) the same year, and Facebook the following year, the early days were all about photos, and pokes, and connecting with friends.
The following five years saw the dawn of video and microblogging platforms like YouTube, Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, even Pinterest, and since 2010 it’s been an explosion of mobile and shortform content. Snapchat, Twitch, TikTok, Reels… mostly it’s been an upward trajectory for them all. Until 2022.
Social media habits have changed
Research carried out by digital audience company GWI for the Financial Times found that the amount of time people spend on social media peaked in 2022 and has since fallen.
Adults aged 16 and over were spending an average of around two hours and 20 minutes a day on social platforms by the end of 2024, almost 10% below the 2022 peak.
You could put some of that down to the pandemic. We spent extraordinary amounts of time online when we couldn’t do much else, so a correction afterwards would hardly be surprising.
But following the research in 2022 for the FT, a follow-up piece appeared in October 2025 by FT author John Burn-Murdoch, who was very clear. “As platforms degrade into outrage and slop, users are turning away,” he commented, in a piece entitled ‘Have we passed peak social media?’
But look further back and something more interesting appears
GWI has been tracking the reasons people use social media since 2014. Across Europe and North America, using it to share opinion has fallen by around a third in relative terms. Using it to meet new people has dropped by around a quarter, while staying in touch with friends has also declined.
At the same time, following celebrities and influencers has risen sharply, and ‘filling spare time’ has become a bigger part of the picture.
In other words, we are still spending a huge amount of time on social media, but we are watching, rather than engaging. Doomscrolling, if you will.
And as people post, comment and connect less, businesses may need to rethink what these platforms can realistically do for them.
What does this mean for businesses?
The latest UK figures back up GWIs findings. Here at Title Media we also published our own research White Paper exploring the difference between people’s consumption of print versus digital media, which bore out a lot of the findings. And Ofcom’s 2026 research found that the proportion of adults posting or commenting on social media had fallen by 12% in the year.
We are increasingly just sitting there, watching, scrolling…
Social platforms have adapted perfectly well to that change. Open Instagram and you can spend half an hour watching videos made by people you don’t know, from accounts you don’t follow, without communicating with another human being at all.
TikTok was largely built around that model from the start, while Facebook has increasingly filled feeds with recommended content, videos, and posts from outside your own network.
You struggle to see posts from your friends, right? You know, we all know. Everyone grumbles about it. But we all still go on staring.
But what if you’re a business, relying on social media to shill your trade, or your goods?
For years, brands were told to build ‘communities’ on social media
Get followers. Start conversations. Create engagement. Build an audience, and you would have a direct way to talk to your customers.
But if the people using those platforms increasingly want to just watch, rather than participate, brands are competing for attention in something that’s become a passive entertainment feed. And there is a lot of competition. If you’re a business I’m going to lay money on the fact that your organic social media traffic is through the floor compared to even five years ago.
The problem is the sheer, terrifying volume of content to compete with.
Your beautifully photographed new product or well-thought-out blog isn’t only competing with another company in your sector. It’s competing with a comedian, a football clip, breaking news, somebody’s dog doing something cute or weird, an influencer, a chef making a recipe, and a video of somebody restoring an Edwardian tiled floor. And that’s before the platform’s own algorithm gets involved.
Worldwide social media user numbers are still growing, with DataReportal estimating 5.79 billion active social media user identities by April 2026. But what exactly does ‘active’ mean now?
What may be disappearing is the assumption that social media will automatically create a relationship between a business and its audience.
What does this mean for marketers who rely on social media?
For marketers, the message is fairly clear. Social media can still earn attention, but it is becoming harder to rely on it for meaningful engagement or sustained reach. And increasingly, most platforms, especially Facebook, are moving to a pay-to-play model, where business Pages and professional accounts won’t even be able to post website links in organic posts anymore. Not without paying.
That puts more value on content people choose to spend time with, wherever they find it – and this means offline as well as digital.
Strong editorial, a newsletter you actually want, engaging print products, good websites, and genuinely interesting brand content all have a role to play because they give audiences something more substantial than another passing post in a crowded feed.
It’s also why there’s an increase in demand for real life, in-person live networking, meetings, and business events, which are all on the up. But more about that another time.
The brands that do well from here will be the ones that stop treating social media as the whole strategy and start building a broader mix of channels they can control.
We need to stop expecting social media to do everything
The golden age gravy train of free marketing is over. But the smart money is on seeing this and getting ahead. Now is a good opportunity to revisit how you market to your audience.
Your website gives you space to explain what you do properly; email lets you communicate with people who have actively asked to hear from you; events create genuine ‘IRL’ warmth and contact; and a print magazine or brochure can showcase your business the way you actually want to be seen.
We may have passed peak social media as a place where people actually come to be social, and engage, but there are plenty more ways to skin a cat, as the saying goes.
Want to talk about magazines, newsletters, or great content? Maybe a new website? Get in touch.
About the Author: Sam Harrington-Lowe
