As we near the halfway point of 2025, social media is in a state of upheaval. New platforms, legacy volatility, regulatory pressure, boycotts, and AI-driven change have made the past six months a clear case study in industry disruption, causing a shift in social media user behaviors.
According to Sprout Social’s 2025 Social Index, most social marketers cited their top fear as audiences shifting to private or closed networks—ranking above crises, layoffs, or even AI—highlighting the growing toll of network fragmentation on social programs.
Why social media behaviors are changing
With limited resources and low executive buy-in, social teams are struggling to keep pace with their audiences in a rapidly shifting landscape. Sprout Social’s Q1 report found that nearly 40% of marketers say their audiences are already spending more time on emerging platforms, posing an existential threat to the years of investment in legacy channels like LinkedIn, Meta, X, and YouTube.
At the same time, public sentiment toward social media is evolving. Many users are rejecting mindless scrolling in favor of more intentional use. According to our analysis, the “anti-doomscrolling” narrative has resurfaced, with over 300,000 mentions in media, blogs, forums, and online conversations this year alone.
A recent survey found six in 10 Gen Z and Millennial Americans feel they spend too much time on their phones, and nearly four in 10 have taken social media breaks for their mental health. Even Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted that time spent on Instagram and Facebook has “gone down meaningfully.”
How AI is shaping today’s social landscape
The rise of Large Language Models (LLMs) as “answer engines” is also reshaping how people—especially younger generations—search for information, driving demand for similarly tailored experiences on social media.
YouTube, which remains America’s most widely used online platform, and TikTok exemplify this trend. Both act as AI-driven, personalized social search engines that prioritize authentic, community-based content. A recent Pew study found most U.S. adults use TikTok to seek product reviews and recommendations—proof that audiences are no longer passively consuming or sharing content on social media but rather, they are seeking it out.
So what does this shift in motivation mean for social media teams?
Your social strategy doesn’t start when your audience opens a platform. It starts with why they did it in the first place.
Social media is no longer a space for just outward connection and validation, but rather a place where people seek community perspectives and nuanced opinions. Gen Z now turns to social platforms before search engines or AI tools when looking for information. If you don’t understand why your audience is on a platform at a given moment, it’s likely that your content will be overlooked.
It’s no longer enough to ask: Is this on-brand? Does it reflect our messaging? Is it better than the competition?
You also need to ask: What questions are our audiences asking right now—and where? Whom do they trust? Are we delivering value that matches platform intent—through education, entertainment, or insight—or are we just adding noise?
Quality over quantity—avoid bulking and be authentic.
Brands now have to navigate increasingly smaller and more spread-out niche communities and platforms with a variety of best practices. It’s tempting to want to be present everywhere, all the time, but data clearly shows this isn’t the best approach. In Sprout Social’s report, respondents ranked jumping on viral trends last as a priority for content they want from brands. Take a critical eye to what platforms you are on and what is being shared. Content relevancy matters more than overwhelming our audiences with volume. As social platforms and LLMs continue to become more intertwined, a nimble, timely, and listening-informed approach to content creation will win out over calendars created in large, vacuous batches.
Community-centric and serialized content will prevail.
Fragmentation has made audience engagement more complex—hyper-personalized, interactive content is now the baseline. The appetite for edu-tainment continues to grow.
People want to feel seen by brands and be entertained. To meet those expectations, brands need to align with what audiences are experiencing on social platforms. That means rethinking content cadence to make space for real interaction, not just scheduled posts. Community engagement shouldn’t be an afterthought or just a response mechanism—it should be part of the content itself.
Interested in learning more about Inkhouse’s social media offerings and today’s social media user behaviors? Feel free to reach out to [email protected]
