The news: Social media engagement is fragmenting, per a new Buffer report.

• Instagram maintained a higher overall median engagement rate than platforms like TikTok (4.6%) and Threads (3.6%) but saw the sharpest declines. Engagement on Instagram was down 26% YoY, falling from 7.3% to 5.4%; engagement on Meta platform Threads, meanwhile, fell 18% YoY to 3.6%, indicating fragmentation within Meta’s ecosystem.
• TikTok engagement was relatively flat, growing only 3% YoY to 4.5%.
• Pinterest engagement was up 23% YoY, growing from a 3.2% median to 3.9%.
• Facebook grew 11% YoY to 5.6%.
• X saw the most notable gains, up 44% YoY. But there’s a caveat: While X’s jump was the largest relative gain, it still lands at the bottom of engagement rate rankings at 2.8%.

Engagement was platform-specific, but was primarily determined using a mix of likes, shares, and comments combined into a single metric.

Behind the numbers: Uneven engagement highlights the current period of social media fragmentation.

• Time spent with Instagram is growing at a slower rate, increasingly only 4.1% YoY this year and 3.5% in 2027. This combined with a declining engagement rate indicates a structural shift. Instagram was once rooted in interactions with friends and followers—but the platform is now heavily recommendation- and discovery-driven, meaning users are less likely to comment and more likely to passively engage.