Is Social Media Dying?

Recent headlines have been asking “Is social media finally dying?” or even asserting that “Social media is dying” or is in its “last days” or is already “dead.” Less dramatically, some merely suggest that social media use peaked some time ago and will likely continue its downward spiral.

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This is not the first time the death knells have sounded. Way back in 2009, for example, when Facebook was one-tenth its current size, a New York Times Magazine article titled “Facebook Exodus” reported that disillusioned and previously loyal users were quitting the platform. In the same month of November 2022, The Atlantic magazine first announced that “The Age of Social Media Is Ending,” and then two weeks later came out with “Instagram Is Over,” alerting readers to the platform’s “fading fortunes” if not quite “the end of the app.”

If exaggerated earlier, the claims of death this time around may be different. So what is the evidence?

Evidence of the End

Some eager obituarists base their confident predictions on declining user numbers. At least in the United States, however, self-reports of media usage don’t appear to bear this out. A 2025 Pew Research Center survey found that while the share of adult Americans using the most popular apps, YouTube and Facebook, has “remained relatively stable in recent years,” four others—TikTok, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Reddit—have grown in overall use. Only Snapchat and X have recorded a recent (and relatively modest) decline. About half of adults visit YouTube and Facebook daily, with young adults being the most tuned in overall, especially to YouTube and TikTok.¹

Other heralds of decline base their predictions on user discontent with the changing character of the platforms. Even while acknowledging that folks are still habitually consuming social media content, some prognosticators argue that users are posting far less and a growing number have grown weary of all the ads, celebrities, AI-produced slop, rage bait, and the like. As the leading apps have become less interactive and more entertainment-focused, they have become less useful as social network platforms. Users are becoming invisible to one another and quietly withdrawing, even if they are still online.

Despite their end-of-social-media claims, most forecasters don’t think social media itself is dying. It is the big apps, such as Facebook, that are facing possible extinction. As the old sites increasingly frustrate, people are turning to different—smaller and friendlier—social networking and messaging apps to meet their needs.

The fact that people are switching platforms instead of exiting social media suggests that they find it helpful in ways that offline life seems insufficient. If so, before we talk about the decline, much less the death, of social media, we need to consider a more fundamental question: What is it that people need social media for? While any comprehensive answer would point to many needs, I will mention only one here: the need for connection. (I will take up the need for self-formation in a later post.)

Social Connection

Recall the enthusiasm that first greeted the social connectivity of the internet. Before there was talk of anxiety, addiction, and doomscrolling, not to mention political polarization, misinformation, and surveillance, there was, to quote one media scholar, an “early euphoria about the potential of the internet and its many applications, platforms, and affordances to be inclusive, transparent, and connective.”² In those heady days, the new communications media promised to eliminate geographical isolation and usher in a new era of democratized information, shared understanding, and increased comity.

That optimism didn’t last. But the early hopes, however misplaced, are important to remember. Before social media was invented there was already a longing for it. For many and complex reasons, American life in the last half of the twentieth century had grown increasingly atomized. Rather than joining the Lion’s Club, volunteering at the food pantry, going to church, or throwing a dinner party, we were bowling alone, as Robert Putnam argued in his famous 2000 book of that title. Associational decline was far advanced, family life was fragmenting, and loneliness was being described as an epidemic.

From perilous isolation, pundits, social theorists, and tech-enthusiasts alike believed the internet could save us. The growing disconnectedness of our social lives was what drove the eager and widespread adoption of the new online platforms for virtual social engagement. And, despite all that has happened in the intervening years, it still is.

Offline?

With all the criticism directed at social media, talk of it as a response to felt needs might seem misdirected. While surveys show that across the generations, users rate social connectivity as the most positive feature of social media,³ some argue that this connectivity is an illusion and that being “too online” causes feelings of isolation and loneliness rather than providing a remedy. The question, then, is whether the need for authentic connection can now be sufficiently satisfied without social media.

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Consider, first, that social media, like other forms of communication media, create new kinds of social relationship and new ways of relating to others and to oneself.⁴ Think, for instance, of online communities created around identities, abilities, and interests and involving interaction among people who have never met and never will. Many users find their involvement in such relatively anonymous communities positive and supportive. It is hard to see how anything similar could be created offline, either through face-to-face meetings or with other types of communication technology—telephone, print media, or radio.

Second, we are still bowling alone. Putnam brought his analysis forward in his 2020 book The Upswing. He provided evidence that associational life continues its decline, as even fewer participate in the meetings and activities of fraternal, service, religious, and other organizations. Where some groups have seen growth, membership tends to be at a distance, only as a donor, for example, and often does not involve any in-person participation. If we consider data beyond formal organizations, such as the number of friends people report having, the picture does not improve.

No doubt, the shift online has contributed to the further decline. But the key point here is that there has been no broad, offline renewal of community that might draw people away from their online engagement.

There is no necessary reason why specific sites, such as Facebook or Snapchat, might not eventually disappear. Social media, however, is unlikely to fade away.