The number of people using social media is increasing and so it is the time spent on these websites, but the number of posts on the sites are dropping…
As of March 2026, there are more than 679 million Facebook user accounts from India. There are 517 million user accounts on Instagram as well. In other words, as much as 34.1% of the overall population of the country is on social media sites.
But the fact of the matter is that most of them aren’t posting on social media anymore. While they are active on these sites, they do not engage with it actively by leaving even a comment. Instead, they just scroll endlessly on the short-form video content
In other words, Indians are still very much active on social media, they are just not social anymore.
What the Numbers say
Ofcom conducted an annual survey on Adults’ Media Use and Attitudes. In the latest survey, which was based on 7,500 people in the UK aged 16 or over, the number of people who actively post, share or comment has dropped from 61% in 2024 to 49% now.
The number of people who explore new websites has also dropped drastically, from 70% to 56%.
These are not marginal shifts. In just under a year, millions of people who actively posted or explored content on the internet has quietly moved away, choosing only to scroll their feed instead.
TikTok, Instagram and the rise of Passive Scrolling
As stated earlier, it is not that people don’t use social media anymore, they just don’t post on social media anymore.
They still use social media, to watch short videos endlessly. The real culprits are TikTok and Instagram. This isn’t limited to India; it is true the world over. 30 million people use TikTok in the UK, which is the app’s biggest base in Europe. Meta recently reported a 30% increase in reel viewing in the USA compared to last year.
The platforms have been redesigned and the algorithm has been altered to show users a continuous feed of the kind of content they consume. So previously common actions on social media – like posting a photo or writing a status update or commenting on someone else’s post or having a conversation – have declined drastically.
The divide between content creators and consumers is increasing and most people are leaning towards the consumption side.
The Fear of Digital Paper Trail
According to another recent survey, the number of people who are worried that their historic posts on social media can cause problems later on has increased from 43% in 2024 to 29% within a year. Whether it is a prospective job offer or in their dating life, people are concerned inappropriate comments posted online have a way of being found and creating problems years later.
A host of celebrities have been in the news because of their old tweets. And with reputations ruined and careers threatened, this is making people think twice before posting anything online.
Joseph Oxlade, senior research manager at Ofcom, spoke about how concerns over long-forgotten posts being unearthed was a factor: “They are increasingly concerned about what they have posted online being there permanently and therefore potentially impacting on them later in life.”
The Last Word
This in no way means that people are shunning social media.
The average time spent on social media websites in the UK has risen to four hours and thirty minutes a day in 2025, an increase of ten minutes from the previous year. People are also using AI, especially ChatGPT, to create content including post messages and images, to share online.
There is a popular saying that the internet never forgets. Once you share something online, even if you eventually delete it, it would’ve been shared and downloaded across the net enough for it to pop up and cause problems later on in life. And this is exactly what’s putting people off from posting.
Long story short, social media has not lost its audience, it has just lost its participants.
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