The Instagram post from the Financial Times below gives us an interesting glimpse of the use of social media, which apparently peaked in 2022 and has been in slow decline ever since.
“We may look back in the year 2025 as the year where social media’s decay became terminal decline,” says,” John Burn-Murdoch, the Chief Data Reporter for paper.
The reason for this decline
Why many took to social media was to connect with other people, stay in touch and to meet new people. But over the past few years there has been a degradation of that purpose, social media began to be filled with content that is meaningless and irrelevant to others.
On top of this, Meta and Open AI have also announced platforms that can generate videos designed for dopamine hits while devoid of meaningful content.
The result
People, especially those in the 16-24 years old bracket, are finding social media increasingly meaningless and have started staying away. Only older people who have nothing better to do but to fill their time are still avid scrollers.
So in Europe and elsewhere the decline has been steep - about 10 percent.
Will this trend play out in Indonesia?
It remains to be seen whether social media-fuelled Indonesia will follow this pattern. If it does then the ramifications may be profound for marketers who rely on influencers and KOLs to hawk their goods and create a buzz round their products.
What is the point of doing so when especially the crucial Gen Z segment is turning away from social media? Who’s going to see and interact with what they post?
Compounding the situation are the disruptive effects of AI search. Because of the shift toward using chatbots such as Google AI Overview, Gemini, Chat GPT and Perplexity, website traffic around the world has dropped because of a Zero click phenomenon. This refers to situations where users are satisfied with the answers that AI search provides and have no reason to click onto any more links to do their research.
A solution for social media use decline and falling website visitors
A very likely solution for marketers being hit by this double whammy of falling social media use and dropping website traffic is to consider Generative Engine Optimization. People will still need the internet to discover brands and then, hopefully, interact with them.
If social media is not driving as many users to their websites, then optimising their content in their owned and earned channels can do the job.
To know more about Generative Engine Optimization visit our website and book a consultation.
