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Creator Economy Trends

Social Media Is Getting Less Social: 5 Stats for Creators

Weston Bell-Geddes
July 24, 2026
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Social Media Is Getting Less Social: 5 Stats for Creators

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Key Takeaways:
  • Time spent on friends' content has collapsed to 17% on Facebook and 7% on Instagram, according to evidence from the FTC's antitrust trial against Meta.
  • Mark Zuckerberg testified that the feed "has turned into more of a broad discovery and entertainment space." The social network is now a TV channel.
  • Median Instagram engagement fell to 0.30% per post in Rival IQ's latest benchmark, down from 0.36% the year before.
  • Real sharing moved private: Instagram's own head says more photos and videos are shared in DMs than in Stories, and more in Stories than in feed.
  • Push notifications from an owned app reach 67% of users who install it. A feed post reaches a rounding error.
Social media is getting less social. That's not a hot take, it's the sworn testimony of the people who run it. During the FTC's antitrust trial against Meta, the numbers came out under oath: friends and family content is down to 17% of time spent on Facebook and 7% on Instagram. Read that Instagram number again. Ninety-three percent of time on the app that built its brand on your friends' photos is now spent on content from accounts people don't follow, don't know, and won't remember. If you're a creator, this is not trivia. It's the reason your reach feels broken. And it's the strongest argument yet for owning a direct channel to your fans. Here are the five numbers that tell the story.

How Much of Your Followers' Time Is Friends' Content?

Stat #1: 17% on Facebook. 7% on Instagram. Those figures surfaced as trial evidence in FTC v. Meta, and CNN's coverage of Zuckerberg's testimony confirmed what every creator has felt for years: the connected graph is dying. What replaced it is Reels, an algorithmic firehose built almost entirely from accounts users never chose to follow. Here's why that matters for you specifically. Following you no longer means seeing you. Your follower count is a historical record of interest, not a distribution channel. The algorithm decides who sees each post, and it optimizes for watch time, not for your relationship with your audience.

The Feed Is Now an Entertainment Channel

Stat #2: Zuckerberg, under oath: "The friend part has gone down quite a bit." In the same testimony, Zuckerberg described the modern feed as "more of a broad discovery and entertainment space." That's the CEO of the largest social company on earth telling a federal court that his social network is no longer about your network. For creators, the honest translation is this: you are competing with every piece of entertainment ever made, every day, for every impression. You're not being shown to your fans. You're auditioning against the entire internet. That treadmill has a cost, and it compounds. We ran the platform side of this math in how much platforms actually pay creators in 2026, and the short version is brutal: you audition daily for reach that pays $0 to $5 per 1,000 views.

Where Did the Social Part Go?

Stat #3: More content is shared in DMs than in Stories, and more in Stories than in feed. Instagram head Adam Mosseri describes it as a shift "from posting in public to sharing in private". By his own description, all of Instagram's sharing growth over the past five years happened in Stories and DMs, and teens now spend more time in DMs than in Stories, and more in Stories than in feed. The social behavior didn't disappear. It moved somewhere the algorithm can't rank it and a brand can't buy it: private spaces, group chats, one-on-one threads. This is the part most creators miss. Your fans still want a direct, private-feeling connection with the things they care about. The feed just stopped being the place where that happens. The creators winning right now are the ones building that private space themselves, inside a product they own.
Chart showing time spent on friends' content: 17% of Facebook, 7% of Instagram, with the remainder labeled as algorithmic entertainment

What Does 0.30% Engagement Actually Mean?

Stat #4: Median Instagram engagement is 0.30% per post, down from 0.36% a year earlier. That's Rival IQ's social media benchmark data, measured against follower count. A 17% drop in a single year, on top of a roughly 20% slide since 2022. Do the math on your own account. At the median rate, 100,000 followers produces about 300 engagements per post. Not 300 customers. Not 300 superfans. Three hundred likes, comments, and saves, combined, from an audience the size of a small city. What is organic reach? Organic reach is the number of people who see your content without paid promotion. On algorithmic feeds in 2026, it is controlled entirely by the platform, and for most accounts it shrinks every year. Your audience didn't stop caring. The pipe between you and them narrowed. As we argued in your followers aren't your customers yet, a follower only becomes a customer when there's a direct relationship the platform can't throttle.

The Reach Math: Feed vs Email vs Your Own App

Stat #5: Push notifications reach 67% of app users. The feed reaches almost nobody. Compare the channels honestly, using MobiLoud's compilation of push notification benchmarks and Rival IQ's engagement data:
ChannelWho you reachTypical response
Instagram feed postWhoever the algorithm picks0.30% median engagement
Email newsletterSubscribers who open20-40% open rates
App push notification67.5% average opt-in7.8% average reaction rate
In-app experienceEvery user, every sessionDaily habit, no algorithm
A push notification from your own app lands on the lock screen of a fan who chose to install you on their phone. No auction. No audition. No algorithm deciding whether your announcement deserves distribution. That's why the smartest creators are treating apps as their primary fan channel and social as the top of the funnel. Andy Frisella built 75 Hard into a #1 app on exactly this logic: the content brings people in, the product is where the relationship lives.

How Creators Win When the Feed Stops Delivering

The trend line is not reversing. Meta's own leadership describes the feed as entertainment, sharing keeps moving private, and engagement benchmarks fall every year. Waiting for reach to come back is not a strategy. The playbook that works in 2026 has three moves:
  • Use the feed for what it still does well: discovery. Reels and Shorts put you in front of strangers. That's real value. Treat it as advertising, not as your relationship channel.
  • Move your true fans somewhere you own. An app turns passive followers into daily participants, with push notifications instead of algorithmic prayers. Fans who open your app every morning are fans who never unfollow.
  • Let the product carry the relationship. Streaks, challenges, community, progress tracking. The app does the daily engagement work, and every bit of usage generates material for your next post.
Building that used to require a dev team and six figures. It doesn't anymore. Built by Foundry builds, launches, and runs the entire product for creators, $0 upfront, on a revenue share. You bring the audience and the expertise. The app becomes the private space your fans have been drifting toward all along. The platforms told a federal court that the social part of social media is over. Believe them. Ready to own the channel between you and your fans? We build custom apps for creators. $0 upfront, 3-week delivery, we handle all the tech forever.
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Frequently Asked Questions

Why is social media engagement declining in 2026?

Platforms shifted from friend-based feeds to algorithmic entertainment. Time on friends' content fell to 17% on Facebook and 7% on Instagram, and median Instagram engagement dropped to 0.30% per post as feeds fill with recommended content instead of followed accounts.

Does a big follower count still matter for creators?

It matters as proof of demand, not as distribution. Following an account no longer guarantees seeing its posts. Followers become valuable when a creator converts them into direct channels: an app, an email list, or a paid community the platform can't throttle.

What is the best alternative to relying on organic reach?

An owned app is the strongest option. Average push notification opt-in is 67.5% with a 7.8% reaction rate, versus 0.30% median engagement on an Instagram post. Email is a solid second channel with 20-40% open rates.

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