Engagement dropped across Instagram, LinkedIn, and Threads in 2025 — even as more people are seeing content than ever.
That’s the headline from Buffer’s latest social media report, which analyzed more than 191,000 accounts and millions of posts. The numbers aren’t subtle: Instagram engagement fell roughly 26% year over year, Threads dropped around 18%, and LinkedIn saw a smaller but still notable dip of about 5%.
And no, it’s not because people stopped scrolling.
They didn’t.
Instagram’s decline is the one that jumps out.
According to Buffer’s data, average engagement fell from about 7.3% to 5.4%. That’s a steep drop for a platform that’s spent the past two years pushing harder into recommendations, Reels, and AI-ranked feeds.
More distribution. Less interaction.
Creators are reaching new audiences, but those audiences aren’t sticking around to like, comment, or save.
Threads tells a similar story, just faster.
The platform grew aggressively after launch, pulling in users and pushing content widely across feeds. But engagement hasn’t kept pace. An ~18% drop suggests the same pattern: high visibility, low response.
It’s the “empty room” problem. Lots of people walk through. Few stop to talk.
LinkedIn is different — but not immune.
The decline is smaller, around 5%. Still, for a platform that built its reputation on high-intent engagement (comments, thoughtful posts, actual conversations), even a modest drop matters.
Part of that comes down to volume. There’s more content on LinkedIn now — more creators, more AI-assisted posts, more everything.
And when supply spikes, attention thins out.
Here’s where it gets crazy.
Because at the same time engagement is falling, reach is often rising, especially on Instagram.
Platforms are getting very good at distributing content.
They’re just… not as good at making people care about it.
There are a few forces colliding here.
First, content saturation. More brands, more creators, more posts per user. The feed is crowded in a way it wasn’t even two years ago.
Second, algorithm shifts toward discovery. Platforms are prioritizing content from outside your network — which increases reach but weakens the relationship between creator and audience.
And third, behavior change. Users are still consuming content, but they’re interacting less. Passive scrolling is winning.
You see it everywhere. People watch. They move on. No like. No comment. Nothing.
It’s not all bad news.
While Instagram, LinkedIn, and Threads declined, other platforms moved in the opposite direction. X reportedly saw engagement jump over 40%, with Pinterest and Facebook also posting gains.
Which makes this less of a “social media is dying” story and more of a where attention is shifting story.
Still. For brands heavily invested in Instagram or LinkedIn, this hits.
The obvious reaction is to post more.
That’s usually wrong.
More content in a low-engagement environment just accelerates the problem. You end up contributing to the noise that’s already suppressing your own performance.
I’ve seen teams do this. It doesn’t end well.
So what works now?
A few patterns are starting to emerge:
- Posts that invite participation (questions, opinions, tension) outperform passive content
- Content with a clear point of view does better than neutral “informational” posts
- Formats that create micro-commitments (polls, carousels, save-worthy insights) hold attention longer
- And consistency still matters – but not at the cost of quality
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