"amidst all the fervor about AI, another consequential story is unfolding more quietly: "In years to come, we may well look back on September 2025 as the point at which social media jumped the shark and began rapidly accelerating its transition from the place to be seen," he writes, "to a gaudy backwater of the internet inhabited by those with nothing better to do.""
"The numbers tell a story of stagnation and perhaps the beginnings of general decline: Time spent on social media peaked in 2022, led by steep usage decreases among young people. The decline "is not just the unwinding of a bump in screen time during pandemic lockdowns," the report says, tracing a "smooth curve up and down over the past decade-plus," and corresponds with higher numbers of users suggesting they open apps reflexively, just "to fill spare time.""
Global metrics and surveys indicate social media engagement peaked in 2022 and has since shown signs of stagnation and decline. Young people are reducing usage most sharply, contributing to an overall downward trend in time spent. Declines do not appear solely tied to pandemic screen-time reversals; patterns trace a smoother rise-and-fall over more than a decade. Some platforms report shrinking core user counts and have shifted to aggregate metrics that mask platform-level declines. Geographic variation exists, with North America lagging as an outlier where growth has slowed but not fully reversed.
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