Approaching zero of my friends are on Meta any more. Most have inactive accounts; a few have canceled outright. Those that are “active” are mostly limited to wishing each other happy birthday.
Afaic, Meta pretty much killed their platforms by pumping rage-bait clicks instead of social content.
Exactly my experience as someone in the ostensible target demographic, late twenties to mid forties social circle. Granted I'm German with most friends/family in central/Eastern Europe so a bit less Instagram obsessed than the Anglosphere but so much has moved to Whatsapp (technically Meta I guess, but not really a public facing social network), Signal, Telegram.
And from what I see working with younger people out of uni, it's almost all private group chats, Discord, only real social platform seems to be TikTok. If there wasn't a date on the blog post I'd have guessed it was from 2017 or something, because the problem just feels obsolete now. Didn't Zuckerberg himself even say something to that effect?
No one is active on social media anymore like they were in college or high school. People just age out or get too busy for that kind of stuff. They might lurk but posts are pretty rare for most people who would have been posting 3 times a day 15 years ago. I'm not sure if the younger generation is actually active anymore or if they also just lurk now. Dead internet theory and all...
Afaic, Meta pretty much killed their platforms by pumping rage-bait clicks instead of social content.